


Close Quarters

by SheelaNaGig



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Addiction, Angst, Comfort, Exhibitionism, F/M, Masturbation, Oral Sex, POV Multiple, Polyamory, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-06 07:54:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 52,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3126866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SheelaNaGig/pseuds/SheelaNaGig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a harrowing nightmare, Cullen finds himself compelled into sleeping in Nymeria and Blackwall's tent. The intentions started out innocent enough but soon spiral into intimate territory.</p><p>**Major spoilers concerning Blackwall, Cullen, and Inquisition in general**<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Safe

**Author's Note:**

> Each chapter is bookended by past events from either Blackwall or Cullen's perspective. The bulk of the story (as currently planned) deals with the march to and return from the shrine of Dumat mission. 
> 
> And I know people have differing theories on how the camps are set up. But in my mind, the entire party travels to area and dick around until the Inquisitor needs them for the mission.

"Warden Blackwall, I presume?" A dulcet, yet masculine voice spoke from behind him. Blackwall had been so enraptured by the gaping hole in the sky he hadn't heard the man approach.

The Grey Warden turned on his heels to find a lofty knight in full armor addressing him. The resplendent man was younger, but not young. He wore his battles in the enduring creases around his eyes, the rigid backwards tilt of his broad shoulders, and the scar upon his lip. 

"I am,” Blackwall said warily. “And you might be..." 

“Ser Cullen Stanton Rutherford, commander of our forces.” He flashed the charming smile that all knights had before they lost their teeth in melees. Ser Cullen offered his mailed hand. "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Warden. Lady Nymeria said I would find you here.” He inclined his head towards the blacksmith's shop. "Have my people not found suitable quarters for you? Any further away, and you'd be camping in the woods."

"Nice to meet you, Ser Cullen. And these lodgings suit me just fine." He clasped the knights hand, noting the firm squeeze of lobstered metal atop his gloved fingers. "Being a recruiter requires that I grow accustomed to putting down stakes in the wilds. But I'd be happy in a sow pen if it meant I could offer my sword to your cause."

"Glad to hear it, Ser Blackwall. Though I assure you, our coalition may be small, but we have finer quarters than a pig sty.” His light brown eyes looked past Blackwall. Following Cullen's line of sight, the Warden spied light gleaming off Lady Trevelyan's armor as she ventured towards the woods beyond. “Better looking company as well.”

"Aye, ser," the older man said, his blue eyes tracking the woman as she crossed the snowy plain. "That is most certainly true."

****

“You are aware that we have people who can do that for you?” Cullen pointed out as he watched the Inquisitor, Lady Nymeria Trevelyan of Ostwick, the Herald of Andraste and the figurehead of the Inquisition, stoop and pick a stalk of elf root.

“And you are aware, Commander, that if you insist on pestering me, I may leave you back at Skyhold next time,” she advised merrily without turning around. 

Cullen chuckled at her wry retort and rested his hands on his sheathed pommel. He was in a blithe mood for a man about to storm a former cohort’s headquarters. “Indeed. I shall remember that next time I speak out of turn whilst my commanding officer prances through the fields picking herbs.”

“Watch out. My lady’s prancing usually involves slicing daggers and caltrops,” Blackwall spoke from behind them, having secured the horses with the company’s groom. He strode past the armored knight and kissed Nymeria on her cheek. “Still, it is good to stretch the legs after riding for a bulk of the daylight. How far are we from the Shrine of Dumat, Commander?”

“Another day’s march. Just over that ridge there.” Cullen gestured past a copse of gnarled trees towards and jagged cleft topped by dense flora. The rocks stuck out of the earth like broken bones. “If my scouts are correct, then we should arrive just before nightfall. Perfect cover to infiltrate Samson’s headquarters.”

“So many ghosts. All red. All screaming,” a brittle, hollow voice uttered. Cole seemingly appeared out of nowhere, joining the small group to stare into the distance at the ridge.

Nymeria felt Blackwall tense beside her, knowing his muscles knotted beneath his armor anytime Cole spoke of tormented ghosts. But the plagued warrior’s restive defense or pleas to cease no longer chased the cryptic revelations. Instead, Blackwall donned his well-worn cloak of reticence and clenched his jaw, bracing for what came out of the spirit’s mouth.

“Yet not so terrible as the blue ones. You remember its taste. It had a taste despite the syringe. Lighting crackling in your veins,” Cole rambled on and Nymeria realized the spirit wasn’t referring to Blackwall .

Commander Cullen’s pleasantly noble smirk—which seemed to be his standard—withered at the ominous babble. The former Templar paled. “What…how? How could you know that?” 

“Your dreams. Your thoughts. Thinking. Dreaming. So loud. Too loud!” The boy clapped his hands over his ears and shook his head. “Can’t make you forget. Roots in your blood. Spreading like weeds. You pull them out. You cut them. Still they grow back.”

“Erm, the boy does this sometimes,” Blackwall offered meekly, rubbing the back of his neck. “Becomes rather cathartic after awhile.” 

The Commander blanched further, pride suffocating as if he’d been stripped of his armor. His mouth opened and closed several times, yet words failed to flow. Only the pink tip of his tongue darted out, sweeping along the tail of his lip scar, undoubtedly worrying at some tiny indentation etched there. Nymeria recognized the gesture. A nervous habit the knight performed when either deep in thought or wracked with anxiety. The knight’s discomfort clotted, nearly palpable.

“Listen, Cullen—I mean, Commander,” Blackwall amended, acknowledging the rift which gaped between the two soldiers since the Val Royeaux debacle. “It’s alright. Half of what the boy says sounds like Qunlat to me. Please, do not fret about Cole’s…disclosures.”

A minute amount of tension eased around Cullen’s amber eyes. The knight flicked his gaze at the Inquisitor and nodded. To anyone else, the unbidden gesture looked strange, but Nymeria understood. It was a thank you. As if to say _Thank you for keeping my secret. Thank you for not gossiping about my daily struggle with lyrium withdraw, even keeping it from the man who shares your bed._

Rallying his composure, Ser Cullen cleared his throat and tipped his shoulders back. “Yes, I’ve, er, read reports on it. Though I must admit, it is slightly unsettling when it’s my mind the boy invades.”

“No need to invade,” Cole spoke, just as irritated as Cullen. “You shout even with your mouth closed.”

And with that, the boy spun and walked away.

“Welcome to our cozy little company, Commander,” Nymeria forced a smile, hoping to blot out Cullen’s frown.

“We make camp at sunset,” the Commander said, turning away from her and Blackwall like a man fleeing battle. “I’ll leave you to your herbs.”

 

*****

She’d been having a rather pleasant dream of mulled wine and a roaring fire when an assertive hand jerked her awake. Nymeria shook the sleep off at once. While raids were uncommon on Inquisition camps, she anticipated what the right concoction of desperation and stupidity could inspire in a troop of bandits.

“How many?” She asked, shrugging into her twin dagger harness. 

“Not sure,” Blackwall said, pulling her on her feet, his sword already in hand. “But I heard screaming coming from Cullen’s tent. Let’s go!”

Only when he whipped through the tent flaps did she realize Blackwall hadn’t bothered to don his breeches. A guttural keening sliced thorough the otherwise silent night and Nymeria dashed after her naked, well-armed lover and into the dim chill. Perhaps she shouldn’t have been so preoccupied with Blackwall’s nudity and covered her own as well. 

The two crossed the encampment in quick strides. Small lantern lights in the surrounding tents flickered on and the sound of rustling sheets and clattering metal accompanied another loud groan of pain. 

“No! No more! Someone help! Please!” a ragged cry tore through the night air, launching a pulse of adrenaline down Nymeria’s spine.

“Cullen!” Nymeria called as Blackwall tried to turn back the tent flap, finding it tied from the inside. 

In his brutal impatience, Blackwall slashed through the heavy canvas and ripped the fabric aside. Both leapt into the tent, weapons ready, only to find Cullen alone, half-naked and tangled in his blanket. A fine sheen of sweat glistened in the moonlight filtering through the yawning, ragged tent flap. The Commander blinked several times and rubbed his eyes with his free hand. 

“Maker! What are you—“ he looked at the intruders and his golden eyebrows shot up to his hairline. Ser Cullen deterred his stare, lifting his hand to block out Blackwall’s stocky body. “Erm, may I ask why both of you cut your way into my tent _naked_?”

“Mayhaps because you were screaming as if the Darkspawn were dragging you down to the Deep Roads.” Blackwall replied a little defensively. 

A dark flush erupted across Cullen’s sallow cheeks and he groaned. Untangling himself from the sheet, he wiped the patina of sweat off his forehead on the very cloth which ensnared him. The Commander hid his face in the blanket. His words muffled as he spoke. “I must have been having a nightmare. They tend to visit upon me when I sleep in unfamiliar places.”

Outside, the camp stirred and the typically dignified military commander looked as if he wanted to burrow beneath his bedroll in humiliation. “Maker’s breath. Have my screams roused the entire camp?”

“Give me a moment,” Nymeria excused herself from the tent and fought a shiver against the biting air outside. A company of bemused, albeit armed people gathered around her. “Everything appears to be alright. Everyone can go back to bed.”

Most of the soldiers averted their eyes at her bare body while her coterie of Thedas’ most brazen fighters looked more annoyed at having been awoken. Only Dorian stared at her with a humored grin, oddly preened for having just been asleep. 

“See, Bull, you owe me a drink!” the Tevinter beamed. “And I mean a proper drink. None of Cabot’s horse piss. Last time I drank that, I had to sift through a crumbling dwarfish tome for a hangover cure.” 

The hulking Qunari crossed his thick arms over his scarred chest and narrowed his good eye. “Wait just a second. Inquisitor, did you wear those dagger sheaths to bed?”

Nymeria pinched the bridge of her nose and tried not to think about any other inappropriate bets her comrades had wagered on. “No, I did not wear the dagger sheaths to bed.”

“ _Vashedan_ ,” Bull threw up his hands in defeat. “It doesn’t count! We made this stupid bet before she started shacking up with Blackwall!”

“Pardon?” Blackwall said and stepped out upon hearing his name. His presence immediately lifted Bull’s mood. 

“Look at that, Vint! Now you owe me a drink!” Iron Bull said, clapping Dorian on the shoulder hard enough to stagger the mage forward. 

Dorian glared at Blackwall, dipping his gimlet gaze between the human warrior’s thighs and sighed. “Well, I could have sworn he was over-compensating for something with that sword!”

Nymeria shook her head and turned back towards Cullen’s tent, hearing Bull explain something along the lines of _It’s always the quiet ones_ as the quarrelsome couple disappeared into their own tent. 

“What was that about?” Blackwall asked, scrutinizing himself with a quick look down. 

“You don’t want to know, but I think your tackle just won a certain Qunari a drink on Dorian’s tab,” she said, trying to tug down the rent in the Cullen’s flap. 

A small lantern beside the bedroll slowly ate away dim. Cullen had emerged from his sheets, running his fingers over his scalp and closing his eyes to the world. “Was it really that bad that you had to cut your way into my tent?”

“Sorry,” Blackwall apologized, his enchanted sword rippling red in the tiny enclosure. “But you were calling for help and Maker knows some jilted noble could hire an assassin to off you. You do command the Inquisition’s military and provide superior strategy. We’d be crippled without you.”

Cullen sighed and stood. He poured a goblet of water from a metal ewer and quaffed it as if dying of thirst. “It is I who should apologize. I sleep alone in the tower, so I had no idea how loud I can be. My apologies. You were only trying to help.”

The lantern burned brighter, flooding light against Cullen’s silhouette and revealing every hard ridge of battle-hardened muscle, as well as a glimpse of something salacious. While wearing more clothing than Nymeria and Blackwall combined, the loose-fitting sleep pants did nothing to hide the jutting erection pointing towards his chiseled stomach. If Blackwall caught Nymeria’s gawking, he was either kind enough to ignore it for Cullen’s sake or patient enough to stall his irritation. If anything, the former Templar seemed to be the last to notice his indecent state. 

“Brilliant. Just brilliant. This night keeps getting better and better.” The Commander set down the ewer and goblet, turning away from them. “Inquisitor, I assure you my…anatomical ardor…has nothing to do with you. I mean, not to say you aren’t quite comely. But sometimes nightmares have as strange effect on a man’s…erm…I’m just going to shut up now.”

“Relax, ser,” Blackwall said. “We’re the ones who just ran through the camp without scants. Who are we to judge?”

“While I’m grateful for your attempt at commiseration, I think I would rather literally be caught with my breeches down than let everyone know that the former Knight-Captain of Kirkwall screams like a little girl in his sleep.”

A fine tremor thrummed through the dense muscles in his back. His voice wavered, perhaps from the embarrassing spectacle, but also from something Nymeria had never heard in the Commander’s voice. Fear.

“Did you ever have these nightmares in the barracks?” Blackwall asked, detecting the other soldiers fright as only another soldier could infer.

The Commander sighed and splashed water from the wash basin on his face. “The first few nights after Kinloch Hold succumbed to abomination, where I happened to be posted at the time.” He let out a mirthless chuckle. “Not many knights survived. I was reassigned afterwards There I was, a young Templar who once thought he was so brazen, waking up the the other knights with my screams and nearly pissing my bunk in terror.”

“But being around others helped, didn’t it?” Blackwall kept probing, obviously guiding Cullen towards a solution Nymeria couldn’t deduce.

Cullen’s broad shoulders slackened. “I thought they’d laugh at me. Tell me to man up and carry on. That if I couldn’t handle what happened on lake Calenhad, then I should shed my armor now and run back to Honnleath. But the men were nothing but encouraging, consoling even. And after those first few agonizing nights, I slept with little fear, knowing I couldn’t be anywhere safer than surrounded by my brethren.”

Nymeria shot Blackwall a sidelong glance, exchanging a wordless conversations which seemed to be growing in number by the day. Blackwall asked the question with a subtle arch of his eyebrow and a twitch at the corner of his mouth. She nodded in response. 

“I really must apologize about your tent,” Blackwall spoke. “The night is cold, and these things barely keep it at bay as is. Perhaps you should share our tent until we journey back to Skyhold.”

Cullen craned his neck to face them, flummoxed. “Erm. That’s quite alright. I couldn’t impede on the Inquisitor’s and your quarters. Maker knows we all get little privacy as is.” His gaze swept over the two shamelessly naked people. “Although I doubt you have much more to lose in that respect. But I’ll be fine. I’ll requisition a few extra blankets from the Quartermaster, perhaps redress into my surcoat and—” 

“Commander,” Nymeria said and channeled Josephine’s pleasant tenacity, “I insist.” 

Before Cullen could argue, she snatched up his blankets and held them captive. Blackwall did like wise with a quick furling of the bedroll. The knight looked practically affronted, but Blackwall just shrugged. “She’s in charge, and I’ve learned arguing with her is waste of my breath and her time.”

Without much recourse, the Commander surrendered, gathering his armor and clothes in a heaping armful and following the couple to their tent. Blackwall and Ser Cullen had ventured inside, shifting the sparse furnishings to accommodate his bedroll. A frigid wind prickled across her skin, many degrees colder than any that had blown that night. Usually, that could only mean one thing.

“When he doesn’t scream, he wants. He wants you,” Cole began and Nymeria immediately dreaded what the boy was about to say. “Not just body. Not just affection. But safety. He encases himself in metal. Invokes the mettle of a lion. But _you_ make him feel safe. He knows you could have made him feel safe every night, but he was too slow. Too late.” 

The silence congealed around the two of them, sliding down Nymeria’s back and seeping into her skin. Such a lonely sentiment cracked her heart and tugged a tendril of guilt. Of course she loved Blackwall. She would never change what happened between them, or the decisions that brought the warrior to her arms. But sleeping somewhere hidden inside her, that old fondness for Cullen reared its head in the darkness.

“Inquisitor?” a voice which could carry across a battlefield but only spoke softly to her spoke. Nymeria faced him. Amber eyes averted to the side, but she recognized their struggle not to lock upon her bare body. “Everything’s in order. Please come back inside and warm-up. Cassandra might use me for a practice dummy if you fall sick on my behalf.”

 

****

"There!" Cullen shouted and pointed towards a snow drift. 

The blizzard reduced the world to swirling shades of white, blue and gray. That Commander Cullen could spot anything in this bloody snowfall was a testament to the man’s keen eyes. The search party had ventured out, their faith in the Herald enduring on her penchant for defying the impossible. But the odds of her surviving both an avalanche and an Archdemon lowered those odds to nigh unfeasible.

"Come on!" Blackwall urged, staggering past the knight in the knee deep snow. In the two dozen or so strides it to took for them to reach her, the powdery accumulation had nearly buried Lady Trevelyan. 

"Maker's balls. If you hadn't seen her collapse, we wouldn't have found her till spring,” Blackwall panted, his breath ragged and sinuses burning from trudging through snow for the past hour.

"Nevermind that!" Cullen ripped off his gauntlet and brushed the snow from her wind burnt face. His newly bared fingers sought a pulse. “She's alive! Maker preserve her. She must have walked all the way from Haven," he allowed reverent astonishment to limn his words. 

"She won't be alive for much longer if we don't get her warm!" Blackwall shouted over the gusts. 

He was freezing his balls off as is, but he effortlessly gave up his quilted coat and wrapped it around her body. Ser Cullen did the same with his crimson surcoat despite his chattering teeth. It wasn't much, but those garments were all they had. The imperious woman looked frail. She shook in the Commander’s arms until he could no longer carry her, eventually trading with Blackwall for the torch. Her eyes sometimes slit open only to clench shut in pain. The Grey Warden knew she murmured against his chest, yet the hollowing wind drowned out her broken whimpers.

By the time they trekked back to base camp, Blackwall’s beard crackled with hoarfrost and the frozen metal of Ser Cullen’s armor tore off patches of the knight’s flesh wherever he lacked a cloth barrier. 

“I will not leave her!” Blackwall blustered at the Orlesian bard, only to have his rage met with the redhead’s austere inflexibility. She shifted her rigid gaze to half-dressed knight. The Commander clenched his jaw as Seeker Cassandra poured another bucket of hot water over his armor. 

“Don’t look at me like that, Leliana,” Cullen warned her. “I’m staying as well. We did not carry her through a blasted squall just to abandon her now.”

“And what are you going to do for her that the mages cannot, Commander?” Cassandra interjected before yanking off his rerebrace, taking some skin and hair with it. “You two look half-dead yourselves.”

“Then we’ll curl up in some fucking blankets and watch,” Blackwall sneered. He didn’t care who these bloody people were or how their vainglorious lineage was touted.

“My apologies, Seeker,” Cullen said. “But we’re staying.”

The two frost-eaten men shared knowing smiles, rejuvenated by their stubborn solidarity.


	2. In Victories We Earn, And Some We Do Not Deserve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long! If you're waiting for the smut, it's coming next chapter. I swear to the Maker, Creator, and the beards of ancestors. In the meantime, have some scarousing Cullen rage and broody, yet amorous Blackwall.

The Commander watched her from across the bustling courtyard. She sauntered through the teeming streams of workers with a rogue's grace, as though the world effortlessly flowed around her instead of her flowing through it. Difficult to think of Lady Nymeria as the same woman cradled half-dead in his arms as he carried across the Frostbacks. Try as he might to focus on both training and the insurmountable tower of tasks required to fix this crumbling fortress, his amber gaze tracked their new Inquisitor, inexorably enthralled. This callow infatuation became an impossible task in its own right.

Ser Cullen had dreadful luck with women, and a seemingly crippled lexicon reduced to stutters and stumbles whenever he spoke to one he fancied. Despite his social ineptitude, the knight slowly amassed his own cavalcade of admirers. Everyone from bashful girls bestowing woven bracelets to feisty crones lodging bawdy offers of carnal comfort. All of them envisioning him the valiant, handsome knight of romantic lore with his gleaming armor and flashing sword. He’d even had the golden curls to accompany that courtly image if only he grew his hair longer. But Lady Nymeria Trevelyan grew up surrounded by Templars. Never once did she gaze at him with the starry eyes of a girl who’d heard too many bard’s tales. No, the very first time she met him, Ser Cullen noted an icy wariness which thawed with each question about his previous stations and background. 

Then she flirted with him. Audaciously inquiring about chastity vows while wearing that coy little smile.

The ice thawed and now this woman inflamed his blood. There was nothing much to it. Whilst the various burdens and tangles of doom and duty complicated matters, the very core remained utterly simplistic. He craved her, and this always seemed to happen to him.

Well, perhaps not always. Mutual dalliances came few and far between. Most remarkable had been that mage at Kinloch Hold ages ago who eventually became the Hero of Ferelden. But to him, she remained a memory, a stolen kiss before the Grey Warden recruiter spirited her away. Why did such bittersweet memories feel as though they belonged to another man? Infatuation aside, love and lust rarely visited upon him. The latter more so than the former, much to his displeasure. A curious farmer's daughter at nineteen, a blacksmith's widow after he left the Order. These fleeting instances of carnality were all he knew of lust outside sole explorations. Bedding the farmer's daughter had been embarrassingly brief and little better than pawing in the dark. And despite her initial flirtation, the widow left him with a gnawing sense of selfishness. That regardless of the numerous times he rebuffed her advances, Cullen had somehow used her even as grief seethed between the both of them like raw wounds.

Wonderful. His love life read as a sad, shorter version of _Swords and Shields_.

The Inquisitor’s heading reeled him from the cursory bout of frustration. Maker, she was walking towards the Warden. A pang of something bitter twisted in his guts. Something possessive and unbidden, hardly an emotion worthy of the most remarkable woman he's ever met. Yet he understood the nature of this greedy beast. And that scared him. 

A migraine had just started sinking its talons into Cullen's temples when she sidled up to the Warden's side. The solemn man smiled, his taciturn demeanor lifted by only a few words from Lady Trevelyan. She tended to have that effect on people. Speaking only for a moment, Ser Blackwall pointed towards the ramparts and they walked off together. 

And Cullen’s feet followed on impulse alone. Maker's breath. What was he doing? Not only was he too busy for this pathetic fool's errand, but he sought to intrude upon a private moment. Privacy had been a rare commodity since Haven fell. Now he willfully infringed upon theirs by spying from the top of a tower.

In suave nonchalance, the Warden leaned on a crenellation and stared at the sweeping vista beyond, keeping the Inquisitor at his back. There was no denying Blackwall looked rough around the edges, but the man steeped in innate confidence. If Cullen attempted the same pose, he’d undoubtedly lean against a crumbling bit of mortar and be sent flailing backwards. 

Sparse snippets from the conversation carried towards him on the wind. Blackwall faced her, pounding his fist in his other palm. 

“I swear….bastard down….to die to do it.” The jumble fluttered in the mountain gust.

Whatever they spoke of diverted to another topic. The Warden’s gruff confidence fizzled to dejection. The Inquisitor said something and he just looked down, shaking his head as if defeated.

"My lady, don’t.” Wafted in the wind, carrying the conviction of those words as well. The stony resolve sparked back in the man’s mannerisms. 

Now the Warden…retreated from her? He walked until a he’d wedged a broad buffer between them before turning to face her again. Blackwall pointed towards the courtyard, never taking his eyes from the Inquisitor They argued. With ever step she took forward, he matched one away. Blackwall was… _spurning her_?

“Don’t make this harder than it has to be.” He appeared downright distraught, pacing away from her and disappearing through the tower door across from the Commander’s perch.

That hadn’t gone at all how Cullen predicted, or dreaded rather. And it left him the grimy sense he’d just witnessed a conversation best left to those involved. Whatever was discussed tore a rift between the couple. Now the Inquisitor stood alone, leaning over the battlements and surveying the range in quiet reflection. She didn't appear particularly upset. Perhaps more annoyed at having to navigate the sometimes illogical affections of men. 

He could go down there. Claim happenstance whilst walking the ramparts as any cautious Commander does. If the Warden didn't want her, then he's more a fool than Cullen assumed. He should go down there. Strike up a conversation with a status report. Smile and chat, attempting to not stumble over his words like a simpering Chantry boy. 

The wind tousled her hair and the sunlight reflecting off the mountain caps, kissing her completion with soft light. The ravages of dry mountain lightly chapped her lips, yet what Cullen would give to kiss her just once. He should go down there.

But he's won’t. 

Maker's breath. Perhaps he'd give it another week. Right. As if one more week would ease the persistent ocean of lyrium lust from crushing upon him. The Inquisition endeavor was simple, just time consuming. Issuing demands, organizing troop movements, reading reports, those were easily definable as a commander. It may be an arduous enterprise, but no one expected anything else. He took safety in his ability to lose himself in work, to drown the voice of his personal demons in sheafs of paper. Scouts and spies cared not about the nightmares which plagued, or the family he hasn't seen in years. All those caustic subjects which scrabbled at his skull, honing their claws when spoken of aloud. His sanctuary may have been a growing tangle of isolated brier, but it repelled the unbidden beasts of his soul with the same capability it used to scratch into him.

With one last look at the solitary woman on the battlements, Ser Cullen turned back towards the roof hatch. A lone desk laden with reports awaited him. Something to distract from the infernal shouting of his heart's voice and searing fringe of his headache.

One more week. One more week to try and ignore the desire demon’s call of the lyrium kit, a wooden box which used to be as much a part of him as his own arm. Another week to figure out if being with this woman would be worth the distraction from duty to fortify what so many struggled to build. Another week to convince himself that he could offer her more than an lyrium-addled ex-Templar with arguably the worst and best luck in all of Thedas. 

One more week to slay demons that will haunt him for a lifetime. Another impossible task to add to the list.

* * *

Though the rest of the night passed peaceably, the Inquisitor awoke to a wretched morning. Storm clouds had crept over the ridge and now pelted the Inquisition forces with cold rain. The soldiers hastily disassembled the waterlogged camp, stowing the supplies for the last leg of their journey to the shrine. Which meant Nymeria’s breakfast consisted of lukewarm gruel and a tankard of grainy dregs from last night’s cask.

As miserable as Nymeria felt sitting in the last remaining tent choking down mush, her sympathies lied with the sodden knights standing in rank in the trampled clearing. The Commander paced before them, donning his polished lion helm. Rivulets of water trickled from the lion’s fangs as if the beast slavered in its hunger. The voice which resonated from the ferocious maw roared so loud that the bass of it rumbled in her chest.

“We march quick! We march hard! Before twilight has set upon us, you shall face our enemy. Take heed, these were your brethren! They would see the Order tarnished for the merits of a false god! Let them taste the steel and the resolve of those who’d not twist their notion of valor for foolish pride!” Cullen shouted and hoisted his sword in the air, and the troops followed suit. 

All pomp and heat dissipated as the Commander dropped to one knee, leading a somber litany which echoed throughout the ranks. Others who had been busy packing also halted, dropping to one knee and joining the recitation. The Inquisitor merely observed, struggling to reconcile this aspect of Ser Cullen with the fearful man tangled in his own bed sheet of the previous night. The knight rose in one smooth motion and everyone else did likewise.

Most of the company huddled beneath the tent now. Yet when the Commander stared across the sodden yard, his penetrating gaze snapped upon Nymeria as though she were the only other person in camp. Brown eyes pierced her from the shadows inside the fanged face guard. Not an indignant gaze, but the intensity of it tinged with some indiscernible. Nonetheless, the Inquisitor’s chest tightened under the honed attention.

The rogue mustered a simple nod, and the knight reflected her gesture.

The tension of the morning barely diffused in their march to the shrine. The column of troops shuffled along, burdened by a notable thrum of disquiet. Most soldiers remained somber and the orderly movement seemed akin to a funeral procession than an advancing army. Only sounds of sibilant rain, squelching mud beneath hooves, and the squealing axles of the encumbered wains pervaded the otherwise solemn march. It grated upon Nymeria's already tightly strung nerves. 

She wheeled her horse off to the side and watched the column trek past. A sea of anxious faces trudged on, wan partially because of the inclement weather, but more so because the enemy they were about to face had been friend to many of them. These weren’t Darkspawn clawing up from the ground or demons summoned from the Fade. The Red Templars were colleagues, sparring partners, bunk mates, brothers, sisters, people who had shared meals and commiserations of the homes left behind. Now they’d cross swords, sharpened ones meant to maim and kill. Nymeria couldn’t begin to comprehend the maelstrom of inner-conflict which cast a pall over their advance. 

Cassandra and Cullen assumed point, taking every precaution despite the scouting reports of inactivity. At the rear of the file, she spied the points of Bull's horns looming a head taller than the rest. Blackwall would be reined up beside him as the Qunari walked. She spurred her horse to a canter and rode beside him and Iron Bull.

“I feel like we’re on a bloody Exalted March,” Nymeria said, pulling her hood further over her face to stave off the downpour. 

“Way to put the lone Qunari at ease, boss,” Iron Bull quipped. “And from what I’ve been told, there’s more ranting about ‘Praise Andraste!’ or ‘Death to the Heretical Scum!’ during those things. This, this is understandable. Similar to Ben-Hassarth hunting the Tal-Vishoth. A fucking gruesome affair done with a heavy heart.”

Blackwall grunted as he always did when something struck him either funny or enlightening. 

“Come on, big guy,” Bull said. “You’re not allowed to withhold your thoughts with a noise like that.”

“It’s just quite poetic, that’s all,” Blackwall started, suddenly looking a little sheepish under Iron Bull and the Inquisitor’s waiting gazes. “This whole ordeal with the Templar versus Red Templar and Tal-Vishoth rebelling against the Qun enforcers. All parties involved believe they’re resolutely right. That what they do is for a better world.”

Blackwall shifted in his saddled and stared over the marching column. “Strange world when two lads who slept across from one another in the same room will be facing each other on opposite sides of the field.” 

“It could have been him,” Cole spoke beside her as he had stealthly reined up beside her. Nymeria had noticed the so called _bog unicorn_ before she saw the lad. The emaciated horse looked ghastly with the sword impaled through its snout, but Cole always insisted on riding it.

“She likes to help,” he remarked, rather defensively. “And no one else gives her the opportunity.”

“Sorry,” Nymeria apologized and Blackwall exchanged a baffled look with Iron Bull.

“But it could have been him,” Cole continued. “It’s why he pushes us though he leads from the front. He hears the red beast keening. Samson was an honorable man. Meredith had been honorable too, at one point. He needs to stop this. He’s afraid. Afraid that in time the red beast with take him too. And when it does, he’ll believe he’s doing the right thing. The honorable thing.” 

“Balls,” Blackwall murmured and shot Nymeria a concerned look. “This one’s going to be a tough one, isn’t it?” 

****

They arrived early, but still too late.

Nightfall saw the shrine stormed, Red Templars slain, and Samson escaped well before their arrival. Maddox, Samson’s tranquil and artificer of his red lyrium armor, had been wrapped in a sheet of canvas cut from Cullen’s tent. The exploited mage remained loyal to the end, poisoning himself. Just because the man facilitated the means for Samson’s impressive power, Nymeria decided, didn’t mean the mage deserved to rot without a proper mage ritual. 

"Has everything of use been gathered?" Cullen asked, standing hunched over a Samson's desk chair, his fingers biting into the wood with a creak. Golden locks still plastered on his slick forehead from when he removed his helm. His typically gleaming armor lost some of its luster beneath a fine coating of soot and other people’s blood.

After Dorian snuffed the fires, what little evaded Maddox’s destruction was picked over for clues. The longer they had lingered in the shrine, the tauter the Commander’s composure drew. Each minute seemed to rub upon the knight like a worn touchstone. And Nymeria suspected the eery hum of the red lyrium had little to do with his dour mood. 

"We've finished scouring the shrine clean for anything of use,” the Inquisitor assured him. "We're only waiting on the red lyrium contain--"

Heedlessly, the Commander snapped, hurling the chair beside Samson's desk to splinter against a stalagmite of red lyrium. 

"To the Void with the lot of them!” Cullen barked. “I should have figured it out sooner. I should have been faster! We would have had him, either dead or imprisoned!”

Nymeria flinched at the unexpected outburst. She stepped forward, about to stop him until Blackwall's hand clasped upon on her shoulder. 

The warrior shook his head. “Let him rage, my lady. Sometimes it's the only way."

The Commander turned his wrath on Samson’s desk. With the sweep of his arm, various empty vials and glass jars crashed to the ground, their shards tinkling upon the ancient flagstones. Cullen flipped the hefty desk over with a labored heave, grunting from exertion.

"Erm, are you sure we shouldn't stop him?" Nymeria whispered. "He might hurt himself."

"No worse than the wounds on his pride," Blackwall explained in a hushed tone as Cullen lobbed a small side table against the stone wall. "We were suppose to locate Samson and put a stop to the Red Templar indoctrinations, perhaps even save some of them. In Cullen's overtly perfectionist eyes, he's failed his mission. If he doesn't get it out now, than the frustration will only scratch away on the inside. So let him bluster. Let him yell until he loses his energy. Perhaps tonight he will sleep without nightmares."

The knight rampaged for another half-hour, the frenzy assuredly prolonged by his Templar stamina. The humming consonance of the red lyrium countered Cullen’s furious dissonance. By the time he fell upon his knees in exhaustion, the charred furniture had been reduced to jagged splinters, shattered glass, and twisted metal. Cullen cradled his face in his hands, tracking black soot in his disheveled golden hair. Upon looking up, his amber eyes no longer blazed but resembled those of a haunted man. He peered around, dazed, as if the carnage of the last half hour were lost to him.

"Maker preserve me," he whispered and reclined on his haunches, wide eyed. "I've... Inquisitor, I assure you—“

"It's fine, Commander," she coaxed, offering her hand. "Just be sure to summon that rage when we finally capture Samson. Which, I promise you, is closer than it seems.”

He nodded numbly, accepting her hand. The haunted eyes brightened with subtle awe as Nymeria hauled the heavy, armored man to his feet with little more than a grunt.

"Come on, Commander," Nymeria beckoned with wave of her hand. "There is still victory to be had of this day. And we deserve to celebrate whatever victory we earn."

“If this is a victory then I do not want it.” A glum smirk tugged at one corner at Cullen’s lip. “But, do not allow my dark moods to dampen the achievement of our Inquisition. They fought hard, they fought with their whole being. Our losses appear much lower than anticipated, so I suppose we should all have drink to that at least. A toast for those who will not see the morning.”

 

****

They'd made camp away from the shrine despite the march in the darkness. Containment teams worked tirelessly to extract red lyrium samples before destroying the malevolent substance. But it still sang, a resonate humming between a siren's song and a dirge. The Commander posted patrols on the shrine and ordered the rest of the company an hour's march away. 

"I'd never be able sleep with that infernal humming echoing in my ears," he told Nymeria as he sat beside her, huddled with everyone else around one of the roaring campfires. 

"I take it you didn't hear Blackwall's snoring last night then?” she japed well within earshot of the grizzled warrior. 

“My apologies. A man can't hear himself snore, my lady. But I doubt I’m anywhere near as loud as you,” Blackwall retorted, hiding a large grin behind his tankard. “We’ve stumbled across sleeping dragons that are quieter."

The party tittered as their Inquisitor glowered. "I have pointy things, you know. Two of them. And I may not have been adept at needlepoint, but I’m awfully skilled in stabbing people."

For the first time that day, Cullen's laugh rolled warm and loud. "She also knows where you sleep as well, Blackwall. I'd hold my tongue if I were you, lest she cut it off while you sleep.”

“My lady would never take my tongue, Ser. It brings her too much joy, and in so many different ways," he dropped his voice to a lower, more suggestive register.

Somewhere in the circle, Iron Bull and Sera hooted. Varric’s laughter sputtered as he choked on his pipe smoke. A disgusted noise, which had to belong Cassandra, punctuated their clamor.

Not to be outdone, Nymeria responded "Perhaps I'd just give another part of your anatomy a little trim then."

Sera laughed even louder, almost tumbling from the empty rundlet she used as a seat. 

"Then you'd make it look like Dorian's!" Iron Bull said and the opulent mage immediately cringed, albeit as elegantly as a cringe could be.

"Why did I ever tell you about Tevinter's bizarre preference for circumcision?" Dorian spoke with his fingers pressed to his forehead.

"Oh, this is exactly what I left the Imperial court for," Vivienne sighed and sipped her wine. “Crude banter and gruesome discussions of anatomical modification."

“And on that note,” Cullen stood, rolling the stiffness from shoulders still encased in pauldrons. “I’m off to perform my vespers and then retire to bed.”

“Come on, Curly. Stay and have another drink! The world won’t end if you allow yourself just a little fun,” Varric said. “Not too much though. You’ve always struck me as one of those repressed Chantry boys who’s a always few drinks away from running around naked.”

“I believe the task of running around whilst naked falls to our Inquisitor. And she’s more than welcome to it,” Cullen smirked, apparently rather proud of himself for that response.

“Especially if she’s running to _your_ tent in the middle of the night,” Dorian reminded.

The knight’s eyes widened and color flushed on his cheeks. A similar heat crept over Nymeria’s cheeks and down her neck, burning nearly as bright as Cullen’s. Any clever retort had dried upon her tongue, leaving only the blatant denials which earmarked a girl with a crush. 

“At least she won’t have far to run tonight,” Blackwall broke in with a robust laugh. “Let the man have his sleep, Varric. He’s earned it.” He lifted his tankard to the weary knight and nodded. 

“We’ll try to not wake you when we settle into our bedroll,” Nymeria finally spoke, shrouding her bashfulness with hospitality. “Go get some sleep, Commander.”

Ser Cullen nodded at the couple in silent gratitude and walked off towards the neat row of tents.

* * *

He should leave. He has no business being in her quarters. Blackwall should have done a lot of things, but when has he ever done the things he _should_? If he’d simply been forthright on the Storm Coast, then this whole complicated mess would be sorted, and the Inquisitor free to move beyond her folly of misplaced affection. Although if that bloody knight would grow a pair and return the Inquisitor’s flirtations, he’d spare them all the sight of Blackwall’s exhumed skeletons.

Honestly, how long did one of those War Room meeting last? Blackwall assumed tugging the strings which maneuvered whole empires must be plucked with caution, but he’d been waiting on her balcony for the better part of two hours. Lady Nymeria and her advisors had already been holed up behind the massive double doors for the better part of the afternoon. Perhaps the decisions were quickly made and they spent the rest of the time drinking ale and trading gossip?

The sun’s fingers had just finished slipping behind the mountain when he first walked in, finding her quarters empty. The temptation to pry grated upon his staunch respect for her privacy. Just another reason he should leave now, pretend he hadn’t wasted the past few hours twiddling his thumbs and reading over the cracked spines of her small library. 

“We cannot do this, my lady,” he spoke only to himself in the vacant room. “There’s a piece of my past which is not worthy of a fine lady, no matter what her stock. Forget titles or merits, you deserve much more than a false Warden who can’t keep his shallow graves covered.” 

The Warden vacillated between the two balconies, peering out into the sprawling peaks of the Frostbacks. The moon’s ascent could be viewed from one side, while the other balcony offered a sea of twinkling stars splashing down upon the rigid darkness of the mountains. Occasionally a wisp of a cloud caught the the moonlight, curling between the craggy summits like a vein of silver. He’d been so engrossed in the serene landscape the he almost missed the soft click of the opening door. 

For all the time he stood there rehearsing, Blackwall’s resolve cracked and those firm confessions washed away in a spate of selfish yearning. He leaned on the door jamb of the balcony, listening to her boots scuff on the stone stairs, each winding his heart tighter, crushing it in coils of passion. 

She hadn’t noticed him. Moonlight glowed upon the soft planes of her face and the sensuous curve of her lips. Maker’s balls, he needs to say something. Especially before she looks up to find a man gaping at her from the shadows and stabs him.

But when he speaks, it’s only a jumble of his intended words mingling with stolen kisses. Every kiss was stolen whether she gave it willingly, her desire for him inflaming the blood in his veins. Somehow he mustered his thoughts, rallied them into one last plea. 

“I need you to end this, because I can’t,” which was probably the most truthful he’s said since he started babbling.

And she just looked at him with eyes that glinted with keen intelligence, her cheeks flushed in the torchlight. A small smile played at lips glistening from their kisses. “I’m not letting you go.”

And that was it. Winding tensions unraveled in the finality of Nymeria’s words. Oh, Andraste’s tits, she’s doomed the both of them and he’s powerless in the face of such beguiling tenacity. And then his lips are on hers in a grand surrender. Blackwall poured himself into her. If he couldn’t give her the absolute truth, then this woman deserved to have every ounce of his soul in recompense. Lady Nymeria relaxed into his embrace, her palms flat on his chest as he drew her against his body. Her fingers bit into the studded quilt as he deepened their caress, slowly goading her backwards. The small of her back thudded against the balustrade. 

If she was to damn them, then Blackwall would take them down in flames. 

Each kiss came with greater voracity than the previous. They deteriorated into feral ardor, teeth scraping and hands groping. Blood drained like molten metal flowing out of his brain and into his prick. His cock strained and ached in the cloth prison of his breeches from her kisses alone. Nymeria met his fire with her own flame. The amorous woman burned furnace hot through her embroidered tunic, the heat seeping into his clothing. _How hot would her bare skin scorch against my body as I lay her down and…_ Maker he needs to stop thinking about that. 

At some point, her fingers entwined in his hair, urging him to trail abrasive kisses along her lithe neck. She smells of something sweet and spicy and it made him somehow harder. An urgent tug on his captured locks exposed his own throat to her sucks and licks. One particularly harsh suckle would no doubt bruise by morning. 

Now Nymeria was pushing him backwards, undoubtedly steering him towards the luxurious Orlesian bed with red silk sheets. They probably slid over her naked flesh every night, caressing her supple body like cool sin. _Stop that!_

“Bed,” she suggested against his lips. 

The monosyllable was everything he wanted, yet wrought him from his lustful frenzy at the same time. If she gets him on that bed, it’s over and he’ll be the most terrible man to walk Thedas upon waking. No, this all careened out of control and he could only handle so much guilt in the morning.

With a centering breath, he pulled away from her warm body. An iron grip on her hips held the Inquisitor at arms length, allowing a chance for the hammering of his heart slow against his sternum. The glossy eyed, flushed face with such kissable lips wrenched a curse from enamored Warden. 

“My lady,” he spoke barely above a whisper, “Allow me to court you. Grant me at least that opportunity to treat you as you deserve.”

He brought the back of her palm to his lips and kissed it, never breaking eye contact. She nodded, dazed, probably bereft of speech if afflicted by the same fog clouding Blackwall’s mind.

Sighing, he raked his fingers through the tousled dark locks framing his broad cheeks. His cock throbbed painfully at the idea of leaving her this night, but he wouldn’t let another selfish decision ruin the pure potential which bound between them. 

“Goodnight, my lady,” he said, leaving her with a simple chaste kiss on the lips.

“Good night, Warden Blackwall.” Her sweet voice wavered in a mix of arousal and disbelief. “Dream of me?”

That put a smirk on his face. “Always, my lady.”

Blackwall closed her door behind him.


	3. The Marcher Queen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nightmares. Waking the sleeping lion. And the ever versatile Marcher Queen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *throws smut at you and runs away*
> 
> No, but seriously, this chapter entails all the tags. So if you aren't keen on voyeurism or exhibitionism, turn back now!

He’d practically been driven from the War Room. So what if he was just a little tired?

"You look as though you haven't seen a bed for days, Commander," Josephine urged, her almond eyes fixed on the ledger before her. 

"Almost three days, if we are counting," Leliana piped in. "Although, he has been taking intermittent naps at his desk."

"Ah, and I assume your little ravens are the ones adding to my mountain of tasks to review?" Ser Cullen rubbed his drowsy eyes despite his attempt at humor. "The summit of which had risen each time I had awoken."

"Mountains are meant to climbed in stride," Leliana reasoned. "If I receive anything urgent, then I shall have you clouted upside the head with it. Perhaps literally if the matter warrants immediate action. Go to your bed, Commander. Otherwise I will arrange for the workers drop it from your loft and set it right next to your desk."

Cullen opened his mouth to protest, not even finished his initial intake of breath before their crafty Antivan ambassador interrupted him.

“Lingering here and staring at markers will not see these tasks accomplished any swifter, Commander. I advise you to get some sleep."

Yet here Cullen stood in the Great Hall. Above his head, dense shadows of night daubed recesses in the vaulted ceiling. The hearth shimmered, dying, its orange cinders all that remained of the day’s roaring fire. Fading scents of smoke and Orlesian perfume were Cullen’s only company. The corridor stretched desolate. All the dignitaries and workers settled into their quarters, replaced with whatever ghosts haunted this place. Cullen himself felt much a ghost this evening. The grainy ale from Varric’s cask soured on his tongue, but he drank it anyway. 

Flurries of irksome thoughts whirled in his head like the soot above the embers. The unalterable past. The unpredictable future. If he drank enough of this terrible ale, perhaps his worry would shrivel upon the vines threatening to rise up and choke him. 

Smooth silence riven as the Inquisitor's tower door creaked open at the end of the Great Hall, dispelling the knight's weariness and replacing it with impulsive diffidence. Did he really look as tired as his colleagues claimed? His gloved fingers rasped over a few days worth of stubble. Certainly his hair needed a trim. If Cullen let it lapse any longer, the ends would curl into an unruly mess. 

Yet all thoughts of preening died the second the Grey Warden stepped out of the doorway. Maker, why was he leaving _her_ quarter’s this late at night?

Warden Blackwall adjusted his clothing, tugging his belt into place beneath his bulky quilted surcoat. When he finally noticed the Commander’s presence whilst striding towards the main doors, the Grey Warden’s eyes widened to the size of round shields before regaining his composure. 

“Ser Blackwall,” the Commander spoke as the man had no choice but to pass him.

“Ser Cullen.” The Warden inclined his head. "Fine evening."

"It is. Although a little late to conduct business with the Inquisitor,” Cullen said, unable to clip the tart edge from his voice.

"Aye, which is why we only shared a drink. Afraid I’ve already pestered the poor woman with enough Grey Warden affairs as is.” Blackwall scratched at his beard, ignoring the stray locks of disheveled hair hanging along his temples. Or the rather sizable lovebite blooming on the side of his neck. 

The two men suffered the awkward silence for ten seconds too long. 

“Well, as you say. Tis late, and my bed is calling me, Commander,” Blackwall bade farewell, slipping out the main doors, leaving Cullen somehow more alone than he previously stood. 

The world stretched darker and larger and that was enough for tonight. The remainder of his ale splashed upon the hearth embers. Ser Cullen stalked through the yard to his tower, alone save for the press of night upon his shoulders. 

Sleep would not come easy. That night he tossed, tangled in his bed sheets, writhing from nightmares which veered off into terrifying twists. But the calm ones were the worst. Their serenity a gaudy, bleached facade, showing the cracks once he plumbed his fingers into them. Cullen reached out, trying to grasp truths which constantly evaded him in the Fade. 

He dreams he is back in Honnleath, standing upon the weather-beaten dock where he escaped the constant prattle of his siblings and his cramped home. This place tastes of distant childhood, of boring, idyllic summers and briny winds rippling over the polished glass surface of the lake. A jarring night stippled with stars swells to infinity, yet the sun still hovers, burning upon a vast horizon belonging to another lake. _No, don’t think about that._ Let this place remain untouched. Let this be his sanctuary.

Uncaring, cold fact conflicts with this scenario. He hasn’t set foot upon this dock after his vigil, yet here he stands in Knight-Captain armor. There is no solitude here. Something's wrong. Placid waters begin to glow, a faint blue mingling with their tide until lyrium laps at the shore. The sun blazing on the horizon nearly blinds him. Cullen holds up his gauntlet, blotting out the light until the searing glare fizzles. Now Kinloch Hold looms in the distance, in the wrong blasted lake.

A tiny dot of a boat careens towards him, approaching faster than any man could row. Cullen knows it’s coming for him.

"No," he whispers. "No! I’m not going back! You can’t make me go back!” He shouts and the tide churns. Rickety boards crack beneath his boots. The middle of the dock falls away, trapping him on a crumbling expanse of decrepit wood. And he knows that if he refuses to board the boat, he’s going to fall into the lyrium. The weight of his armor will sink him like a stone, drowning the Templar in the very suit meant to save his life.

Desperate, he looks towards the vacant shore, and upon looking back he finds the boat moored beside him, captained by none other than Samson. Everything about Samson is red and terrible, a crystalline shadow of something human. The remnants of a man he once called brother proffers a red-taloned hand. “I’m waiting Cullen. We are all waiting. Toll’s only one coin, and I know yer good for it.” 

"Cullen!" A familiar voice cries. He turns and finds Nymeria standing on the shore. "Cullen! Give me your hand! Here!" 

She offers her dainty hand, somehow latching upon his gauntlet in some trick of spatial distortion, tugging him onto the safety of the shore. They collapse upon the coarse grass and stare up at a starry night tinged green by sparking fissures. The sky fractures like a cracked looking glass.

"Nymeria," he speaks, because for some odd reason she isn't Lady Trevelyan or the Inquisitor here. "I can't do this. Not anymore. I should be taking the lyrium! Enduring this madness is ripping me apart." Tears he denies himself while awake scald his eyes and scour down his cheeks. 

"Then allow me to put you back together," she smiles, that wicked little grin he's only seen flashed at himself or...the other man. There's another man, but he can recall neither face nor name. Just a shadow of an existence outside this place.

"Only you," she purrs, cupping his jaw and kissing him. "There's only you and me, Cullen." 

Next thing he knows, she straddles his hips and his armor has vanished. Her clothing disappears as well. Nymeria’s naked body looks oddly familiar, but all wrong. It's either too young to fit her years, or shows the ravages of birthing children he knows she doesn’t have. No, this doesn’t make any sense.

"Commander," she whispers, icy breath caressing the shell of his ear. "I'm yours, Knight-Captain. Let me take your pain away.” 

He's unsure when it happened, but he's thrust inside her tight heat, pounding between her supple thighs as she bounces with each frantic thrust. Maker, he needs to slow down or he's going to spend. The Breach churns and flickers behind her, a ghastly halo flourishing in darkness. Green phosphorescent tendrils slither over her neck, crackling like electricity in her bright green eyes. He'd be terrified if he could grasp any coherency existing beyond this fervent joining of bodies. Something’s blocking him. Hindering him from accessing the full measure of emotion and his total gamut of memory. The past obscures, all ghosts drifting outside this moment as he strives to summon them to murky recollection. 

He’s about to spill himself, his seed surging to fill her womb, when the green tendrils harden to solid red. Red lyrium thorns pierce his skin like barbs, shooting through his veins until he feels them crawling up the back of his gullet. Cullen has no problem finding his terror then. The crystals splinter in his throat, drowning his screams as shards rip him asunder from the inside.

The Commander startled awake in his bed, trembling and drenched in cold sweat. He shot up from the pillows, clutching his dry throat before confirming he hadn't been torn apart. Not that any of the wounds he'd ever sustained in dreams manifested outside the Fade, but sometimes their pain endured, lambent beneath his skin, persisting in a memory of an ache. With a hoarse groan, Cullen raked his fingers through his hair, sweeping it from where it plastered on his slick forehead. He didn't need to turn back the sheet to confirm his indignity. He felt the cooling slickness of his seed spattered on the inside of his sleep pants, smearing over his thighs and testicles as he shifted. This wasn't the first time he’s spilled seed in his sleep, and probably wouldn't be the last.

Until the fear subsided, each breath came in heaping gasps as if it were his last. A lone candle burned beside a dry old tome about the Orlesian Conquest of Fereldan. Looks like he’d read a few more chapters after all. With a weary groan, Cullen pulled himself from his bed to change into clean pants.

* * *

The couple ended up conversing around the campfire longer than intended. When they finally stripped off their armor and crept inside the tent, Nymeria heard the soft sounds of Cullen’s snoring, telling he lay fast asleep. The exhausted knight didn’t even stir as Blackwall placed his sword into the weapon rack, the hilt clattering on the metal pegs like a clashing sword.

 _Sorry_ he mouthed after suffering one of the Inquisitor’s sharp glares.

A polished, tidy pile of armor had been assembled along the posterior canvas wall. The lion helm gleamed red beneath Cullen’s fur mantle, its eyes burning in the light cast from Blackwall’s sword. The gaping maw froze in an eternal roar looming atop a throne of fine metalwork. Blackwall stacked an equally neat bundle of his own heavy armor next to Cullen’s. Considerably less methodical compared to the two career soldiers, Nymeria dropped her light rogue’s gear into a haphazard heap between the two piles, leaving it at that.

As her riding trunk lacked sleeping garments such as night-rails and bed robes, Nymeria decided to strip naked as per usual. Cool night air slid over her bare flesh, scattering patches of goosebumps down her arms. Her lover arched one of his thick brows at her in mild surprise. 

“Well, it's nothing he hasn't seen before,” she whispered with a shrug. “And you try sleeping in a constricting breast band. It’s as comfortable as a corset.”

“Believe me, love. I'm not complaining.” His hungry gaze swept over her, cataloging every curve and scar. As much as the scrutiny held a lustful appreciation of her body, it was also the concerned gaze searching for fresh wounds, which sometimes Nymeria deferred until morning. Much to Blackwall’s irritation. The Inquisitor rolled her eyes and spun around, shaking her bare bum as further proof of her good health.

“See? Just those few little scratches Solas took care of,” Nymeria reassured.

Without a word, his warm calloused hand trailed down the valley of her spine, resting on one of the healthy buttocks she wiggled so audaciously at him.

“You’re lucky the Commander’s asleep. Otherwise I’d spank you so hard the entire camp would hear it,” he threatened in a husky voice that verified his intent. Deprived of privacy, the hand contented itself with kneading her rear in a punishing, needy squeeze. 

Nymeria craned her neck around and stuck out her tongue. “Stop admiring it and get in bed. Elsewise my tits will resemble those statutes in Emprise du Lion you so aptly named.” 

They nestled beneath the blankets, seeking the intimate warmth of each other’s bodies. Solace smelled like Blackwall, of cedar and male musk. Nymeria knew no greater pleasure in the world than snuggling into her lover’s cozy embrace on a cold night. Especially after the perils of battle which left thoughts of morning as distant as this war’s end.

Blackwall nuzzled up behind her, also choosing to go naked beneath their woven blankets. Fuzzy thighs tickled the back of her legs, rippling goosebumps anew, and not because of the cold. Shared quarters or not, it didn't take long for the iron hard length of him to prod her backside.

"You can't be serious!" Nymeria exclaimed in a hiss of yell. 

"What?” Blackwall asked, blinking his gorgeous blue eyes as if he’d been caught with his hand in the offering plate. “This day we live to see another sunset. Does that not call for our usual celebration?”

"Have you forgotten we have a guest?" She nodded her head at the man, the commander of the military arm of the Inquisition, sleeping only a scant three feet away from them.

"And? He hasn’t stirred a pinch since we’ve snuck in.” Blackwall bucked his hips against her derrière, knowing the fire that motion kindled in her womb. “And so what if he does wake up? Despite those ridiculous rumors of his virginity, I’m quite certain the Commander has firsthand experience with carnal relations and the knightly courtesy to ignore us.”

“Blackwall,” she started in a hiss before sensuous lips brushed over her nape, teasing her sensitive flesh with scraping teeth. 

"My lady, I am starving for you," he urged beneath his breath. An ardent hand cupped her breast, rolling her taut nipple between his fingers, stirring ripples in the lake of her arousal. "What if I make it quick?"

“How romantic,” she spoke, trying to sound wry, but the slight waver belied her burgeoning desire. Nymeria mulled over his crude proposal. Nagging conscience and the last shred of her modesty drowned in the inexorable blood roar of physical longing. The unruly tide churned and flooded, coalescing at the apex of her thighs, in her aching breasts, and every single place his bare body touched hers, especially where the scorching, silken brand of his stiff cock jabbed the cleft of her arse.

Across a bare expanse roughspun carpet, Cullen snored lightly, curled in fetal position beneath a crimson blanket. Red light flickering from Blackwall's runed sword illuminated his handsome face. Closed eyes raced beneath their deep-set lids, leading him through the Fade in what Nymeria hoped was a sweet dream. Those little furrows and creases which chiseled crisp during the day softened in this night’s sleep. The sleeping man appeared a far cry from the sweaty, blood spattered knight bleeding his fury out in the smoldering shrine. Now he looked almost boyish, innocent with his long lashes and delicate bottom lip. That facial scar held his only hallmark of past ferocity. This vulnerable delicacy contradicted such steadfast resilience. 

For reasons Nymeria cared not to dwell on, carnal impulse clenched tighter between her thighs and she grew slicker watching him sleep. _Maker, preserve me._

"Quick _and quiet_ ,” she whispered, conceding to growing hunger which often rendered sleep fitful if not sated.

"We both know who the vocal one is, my lady.” Blackwall grinned against her neck before rolling her on her back. 

Blackwall’s bulky weight gingerly settled atop her, suppressing the crisp rustle of the blankets. This moment reserved for fleeting kisses and exploratory touches exchanged in near silence. Yet the resolve of preserving that silence nearly fled as he suckled her nipple between his teeth, circling the nub with his agile tongue. Her lover’s beard prickled over her silken, scarred flesh. A knee spread her thighs, allowing a probing finger to slip between her swollen nether lips. Heavy heat of arousal roiled like a hot spring. 

Quick will be easy. Quiet will be impossible.

"Maker's balls, you're wet as a bog and I've barely done anything,” he whispered as two thick fingers delved into her sopping quim, wresting a low moan from Nymeria's throat. Blackwall smirked, quite proud of himself. "Quiet, lass. Lest we wake the sleeping lion."

Whether it was the calloused thumb swiping over her sensitive clit or the provocative risk of being caught, Nymeria forced herself to muffle a whimper with her hand. Everything about this clandestine scenario seethed her blood and shrouded her in a fog of lust. The two fingers abandoned her heat, leaving the Inquisitor wanting. She sunk her teeth into her palm the second Blackwall's broad cockhead breached the welcoming entrance of her body. He plunged each inch inside with excruciating leisure, those fathomless blue eyes staring down at her the entire time.

"I love watching your face as you take my cock, Nym. To see that prim little brow pinch and quiver as you clench around every hard inch of my prick," he spoke low in her ear. "When we get back to Skyhold, I'm going to make you scream and cum until you're hoarse. Make you gush upon me exactly as you did the first time we fucked. Is that what you want?"

Distrusting her voice, Nymeria nodded against his shoulder, reveling in the fullness and intimacy blooming inside her. Their pace simmered slow, restrained, mindful of the loud noises which accompanied good sex. One particularly strong thrust slapped the inside of her thighs and reverberated in the fragile silence of the tent. She giggled into her palm and Blackwall touched his forehead to hers, stifling his own chuckle by shushing her. 

“Quiet, love. Or else I may gag you,” he jested before silencing her with a soul-shaking kiss.

All this subterfuge and restraint stirred her orgasm, yet the agonizingly shallow thrusts bridled it from bubbling over. She needed more.

"Deeper," Nymeria bade in a hushed plea. 

With the expression of a man powerless to her will, Blackwall rose to his knees, straddling one of her thighs and propping her ankle on his shoulder, splaying her trembling legs wider to him. The position shifted Nymeria’s body to rest on her flank, facing the oblivious, sleeping knight. Now a slight furrow wrinkled between Ser Cullen’s closed eyes as the corner of his lip twitched. Lust muddled cognition missed that the man no longer snored in a steady cadence. What little privacy the blankets afforded now gone as they rucked over Blackwall’s calves. Chilled air steamed as it met her fever hot skin, or at least it felt like it did.

"You'll have to keep yourself quiet, my lady,” he hissed as he entered her once more, splitting her apart, plunging his head brutally slow inside her grasping channel. "Can't reach you from up here."

He plowed into her with languorous yet plundering thrusts, providing exactly what she demanded of him. A teasing nip of teeth grazed her ankle as she dipped a hand between her thighs, stroking the sensitive bud which always enhanced her pleasure. A rough refrain of louder moans threatened to spill from her lips. She staunched them with her palm, the broken mewlings muffling as they escaped her throat. The Inquisitor no longer trusted the silence as her heart hammered in her ears.

In the midst of the furtive joining, Nymeria dared to peer towards Cullen's bedroll…to find keen amber eyes watching them through heavy-lidded, glossy slits. The knight drew a sharp breath as their startled gazes met, fully aware there was no way to dismiss this scandalous situation. Her pulse drummed in her throat. She was caught. What little mysteries her body retained last night flayed away in an act of vulgar pleasure. He could just roll away, pretend to sleep, preserve whatever scraps survived of the decorum between colleagues. But his eyes implacably fastened on her bare skin, unflinching in their molten amber desire.

And only now did Nymeria recognize this hungry stare. The same gaze peered at her from the shadows of his helm that very morning. He wanted her. She knew he wanted her, but now she saw the drowning depths of that raw yearning. Any air of mortification singed away beneath his rapacious, sifting stare. This wasn’t the same Cullen who rubbed the back of his neck and fabricated excuses any time she flirted with him. This beast exuded pure ardor, scenting her with his flared nostrils.

He watched her fuck without a single shred of shame or discomfort, and she’d never been more aroused in her entire life.

Shock and lust twined into a confusing thrum, rippling at her core with a firm clench upon Blackwall’s shaft. If the tightening in her quim hadn’t been the first indication of their audience, than the unabashed, ragged moan clawing from her throat alerted her lover. Unsure of how Blackwall reacted, Nymeria noted a fresh spark of hesitance in Cullen’s eyes. They flitted to the other man’s face, as though seeking a cue of assent or hostile warning for privacy. 

The crucial fulcrum of the night pivoted upon a silent exchange that Nymeria missed half of, her eyes locked on Cullen’s brow as it creased in confusion. 

Instead of dampening or stilling his thrusts altogether, Blackwall’s hips increased their fervor. Sounds of bare skin colliding shattered the brittle hush of the tent. So that was his answer. Unsurprising as Blackwall previously confessed his penchant for exhibitionism. Soon Cullen's hitched breath joined the lover's noisy duet. 

She could stop this. She had the power to do so as the inadvertent locus of this obscene circumstance. But Nymeria won’t. Not when Cullen paid her an honest homage of patient lust. Those eyes vaunted brutal strength checked by curious intelligence. Under that piercing stare, she vicariously fixated on how her breasts jiggled with each thrust, how her thigh trembled as it extended up Blackwall’s torso, and especially on how her fingers continued to caress her exposed clitoris in shameless flicks.

"Beautiful, isn't she, Commander?" Blackwall asked, daring to be the first to speak.

"Very beautiful,” Cullen replied laconically with throaty timbre. The knight uncurled his muscular body and rolled onto his back, never taking his eyes off the Nymeria. "You're a lucky man."

A calloused hand slid tenderly over Nymeria’s thigh and Blackwall bit her ankle in feral appreciation. “And don’t I know that? Sometimes, I wonder what the rest of the Inquisition would think if they knew their Inquisitor was such a wanton little woman.” He growled and thrust harder inside her, taking every inch of quarter her body offered. “But I don’t give a shit what they think. I only care to please my lady. To indulge whatever she demands, no matter how lascivious the request may be.” 

Dimly, she realized that was a signal for something. But what? Her lust-ravaged mind struggled to string together lucid thought let alone make requests.

The heat inside the tent thickened, covering Nymeria in a delicate sheen of sweat as she met her lover’s thrusts. Ser Cullen must have also suffered the onset of the sweltering warmth. He pushed the blanket down his body, leaving the hem to hover sinfully low on his bare abdomen, but not quite at his hips. His right hand lingered beneath the cover, moving in a lazy, primal motion atop his groin. All the while those tawny eyes groped her ruthlessly bare body.

Nymeria’s harried brain yielded a single request. Lewd curiosity overwhelmed the tatters of propriety, obliterating her filter in one foul swoop.

“Cullen, I want to watch you," Nymeria confessed, closing her eyes, unable to recant those words. His bedroll rustled and she feared he had rolled away in revulsion. This was _Cullen_ she propositioned. The doggedly moral ex-Templar who used to turn as red as his surcoat while floundering through her racy flirtations.

"Told you she was a wanton little vixen, Commander,” Blackwall said and lovingly caressed her flank.

Nymeria hazarded to open her eyes, dreading what awaited her. 

“Oh,” she uttering in one, drawn out, shivering exhalation before a swear loosed off her tongue. 

The knight obliged her and had kicked off his blanket…as well as his sleep pants. Cullen tended to himself in languid strokes, his foreskin gliding along his stiff shaft with each caress. Nymeria lost her breath at the sultry sight. She was as entranced with his masturbatory fondling as the knight was enthralled by the lovers’ swiving. 

Andraste’s flaming arse, the man looked gorgeous. All chiseled contours and carved muscle which could reduce the statues in Val Royeaux to weeping with jealously. Finer details obscured in the softly pulsing, red-tinged light washing over his bare skin. Occasionally, a scar here or there caught the light and shimmered amid his sun-kissed flesh. A dusting of curled hair sprouted across his powerful legs and arms, but his brawny chest appeared mostly hairless. She became acutely aware of their close proximity. Nymeria fought the sudden urge to run her hands over it, just to confirm her suspicions about his chest, and perhaps feel the hardness of his abs while her touch idled on him. 

Body carved by the finest artisan in Thedas aside, her attention drifted back to the equally enticing man bucking inside her, losing his pace. 

“Maker’s balls, Nym.” Blackwall gasped, his fingers biting into her thigh. “You’re so fucking tight, love.” 

His swarthy brow knit together, a telling sign he wouldn’t last much longer. Dark hair cascaded alongside his temples and swayed with his thrusts. The forked thickness of his beard swallowed his jaw, carrying the wilderness with him wherever he went. Blackwall looked so savagely beautiful in his unfettered abandon compared to Cullen’s unraveling reserve. 

"Nymeria," Cullen spoke in a guttural whisper, recapturing her attention. Her name released as if he'd clutched it safe to his chest since the day he met her. Her name given back as veneration, as benediction, as litany, as poetry, as lament, as a secret. 

Greedy triumph flared in her veins that the same thunderous voice bellowing commands reduced to a tremulous timbre when uttering her name. The very notion unsnarled the knots these two men had tangled at her core.

And orgasm was there, straddling the verge. Every nerve in her body condensed between her thighs. One look at Cullen was enough. To see the beautiful, scarred lip pulled back, flashing white teeth as his own pace hastened. Those perceptive eyes unfocused in their arousal but ever vigilant. Perspiration beaded on his brow, not a sweat born of nightmare, but of lust. And the knight wore it well. 

“Fuck, Nym!” Blackwall grunted, his hips stuttering as he swelled and spent inside her.

Her own end hit as hard as a stampeding bronto. The pinpoint flame her nerves had contracted to quickened, erupting outwards to flare into Nymeria’s entire body. Throes of release propelled her through several seconds of blissful spasms and staggered time. While her recollection muddled, the Inquisitor vaguely recalled crying out both mens’ names amid a torrent of language unbecoming of a genteel lady.

The tumult ebbed, reducing her to a quivering, boneless heap. Blackwall had slipped from her body and collapsed on his side behind her. His beard prickled between her shoulder blades as he laid his sweaty forehead against her nape, utterly knackered. Unlike the spent lovers, Cullen gripped the base of his erection in his inert fist, looking almost pained as he purposefully denied his own release. 

“Please, Cullen, don’t stop,” Nymeria bade between shallow pants. “I want to watch you come. Please.”

That was all he needed to hear. Cullen’s amber eyes clenched shut as a few hasty strokes served to undo him.

“Nymeria!” The knight grunted. His back arched off the bedroll as he arced a hearty amount of seed to spill over his fist and stomach. The pearly spend dribbled through his fingers and into the dark gold thatch of nether curls.

The three of them laid there, not speaking, letting ragged breath and Nymeria's pleased murmurs fill the gaping silence. Though the last to orgasm, the Commander took the initiative to clean himself up. He quietly wiped away his seed from where it splattered over his hand and stomach. 

Blackwall reached into his rucksack, retrieving an Orlesian silk handkerchief to tend to himself. Only Nymeria seemed content to just luxuriate in the torpor of euphoric afterglow. Sweat glimmered on her fevered skin as the broiling heat persisted, strengthening the pungent alloy of male musk which hung in the air.

The two men settled into their respective bedrolls, committing to an unspoken pact of silence. Cullen eased back beneath the blankets, staring up at the pitched ceiling before closing his eyes. His rhythmic snores came minutes afterwards.

Her lover once again settled behind her. The comforting, burly mass of him engulfed her in a protective embrace. Soon he too drifted off. With a grin curled upon her lips, Nymeria succumbed to slumber moments later.

* * *

When he said he wanted to go somewhere a little more private, Blackwall meant to avoid the familiar Imperial Army lieutenant who kept glancing over at him. Of course, his lady interpreted such a suggestion as a desire for a furtive rendezvous.

Which is how he ended up in a nook behind a tapestry at the Winter Ball, palming handfuls of Lady Nymeria’s pretty breasts beneath her uniform, and Blackwall both loved and loathed it.

"What? I thought patrons were expected to indulge in a little scandal at these soirées?” she said, her coy grin flashing white in the semi darkness. 

_And if they figure out who I really am, then you'll have enough scandal to spill from your chalice, my lady._

The Inquisitor reached for his fancy belt. All the blood abandoned his brain and shot straight into his prick. "No, my lady,” Blackwall urged as his prick roared at him in anger, an increasingly common occurrence of the past few weeks. He removed one of his formal gloves with his teeth. "Let me take care of you." 

He shoved his bare hand down the front of her pressed trousers, finding her slick and wanting. So fucking wanting. Maker’s prodigious cock, he’s not going to survive this woman. The wanton vixen bucked in his palm, mewling into his shoulder. And when she comes, she looked such a lovely broken sight that Blackwall’s perseverance began to waver. Fingers twisted in his uniform coat as she writhed against him, knees quaking while she whimpers his name.

And he needed to get away. Put some distance between them or one seductive nibble of her bottom lip will be his undoing. Blackwall leaned her back on the marble wall, making some excuse about keeping watch as she recovers. He kissed her before stepping out from behind the tapestry…

And immediately stumbled into the Ser Cullen. Quite literally.

“Maker’s light, I told you I’m not interested in—“ the younger man began hot before fizzling into confusion. “Ser Blackwall?” 

“Ser Cullen,” Blackwall tipped his head in regard. “Dodging your adoring retinue of admirers?”

The knight sighed and rubbed his temples. “The sooner this blasted affair is over, the sooner I’m leaving Orlais and never coming back. Really, one gentleman saw fit to grope me as I were a stallion for purchase!”

“Barking like a true Ferelden.” Blackwall chuckled warmly. 

At that moment, Nymeria stumbled from behind the tapestry, her cheeks colored with a healthy flush and eyes half-lidded until she saw Ser Cullen. “C-commander,” her words came as a bad impression of nonchalance.

The clever knight’s eyes darted from Nymeria, to the tapestry, back to Nymeria, until he obviously noticed Blackwall wore only one glove. That lopsided smirk lifted upon his scarred lip. “Well, I see at least some of us are enjoying ourselves this evening.”

Blackwall tugged his glove back on and matched the Commander’s amiable demeanor. “You know what they say. _When in Minrathous, do as the Tevinters do._ ”

Nymeria’s complexion went as pallid and frozen as the alabaster statues around them. She was about to open her mouth, either to justify or to lay into her indiscreet paramour, but the Commander’s husky chuckle interrupted her. 

"If I dare say, the Orlesians could easily surpass the infamy of Tevinter,” Cullen said. “They are certainly more...friendly than Fereldans or Marchers. I've been fielding as many invitations to one of the upstairs rooms as I have to dance. Templars have always been prohibited from attending these affairs and I see why. Such temptations aren't for the weak willed."

"Come, Commander," Blackwall said. "You're no longer of the Order. A handsome man so hearty and hale as yourself surely has needs. Perhaps your tireless work calls for a little indulgence time and again. Or do you still subscribe to the Templar’s frugality concerning pleasures of the flesh?”

Now the knight started to rumple around the collar as the conversation focused on himself. His brown eyes darted towards the Inquisitor before meeting Blackwall once more. 

"You mistake me. My reluctance has nothing to do with the Order's teaching of...restraint. But it has _everything_ to do with discretion. Merely prudent on my part. Especially since every act of affection I’ve witnessed tonight is brandished like a poisoned dagger,” Cullen said, slowly relaxing once more. “And when I do choose to indulge, Ser Blackwall, it won't be with a masked woman in a stranger's boudoir. The entire engagement seems rather frivolous and impersonal. But perhaps that's the Fereldan in me barking once again.”

“Ah, but that is how the _Great Game_ of the Imperial court is played,” Nymeria intoned with a dramatic flair. 

"I think I prefer our games in the courtyard," Cullen offered, the smirk returned to his lips. "Not as many daggers or masks.”

"But just as many dirty tactics," Nymeria added and tipped up her chin in mock haughtiness.

“Only as a direct response to one of your ruses,” Cullen said, playfully defensive. His attention shifted back to Blackwall. “Did you know our Inquisitor has the prowess of a pickpocket and the ethics of a swindler? If my memory wasn't as apt, she'd have gotten away with _bumping_ a few pieces out of my line of advancement. Or is cheating a part of these _Marcher Rules_ you keep insisting upon.”

“Because, _Ser_ , in Ostwick a queen can only jump two soldiers so long as they have a single space between them, and a space to land after the second piece. You keep trying to take two consecutive pieces bunched in a row. The Marcher Queen cannot take two soldiers without a place to rest between.”

"I have no idea what you two are talking about, but it sounds a lot more intriguing than any board game I've ever played." Blackwall looked at them in good humored scandal. "But that doesn't sounds like a Marcher Queen."

"How so?" Nymeria looked at him askance. “They play under different rules in Markham?”

Blackwall failed to stifle his broad grin. "A true Marcher woman wouldn't need a rest between taking two soldiers."

Cullen coughed out an uproarious laugh and Nymeria glared at them both.

"In fact, she'd probably take the two soldiers and come back for seconds,” Blackwall added and watched Nymeria's brow pinch sharper.

"I believe we should invite Warden Blackwall to our games," Cullen said once his laugh trailed off. "He’d serve as an excellent narrator, and perhaps keep an eye out for your tricks.”

"If you two are quite finished," she tried to sound serious, but Blackwall saw her biting back her smile. “We should return to the ball.

Blackwall straightened his impeccable uniform.“Lest people conceive another salacious rumor about the head of the Inquisition sneaking off with two handsome men.”

Nymeria tugged her bottom lip between her teeth and appraised the two soldiers. “Now _that_ is the type of rumor I’d welcome.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maker, these little flashbacks are really bulking up my word count. This chapter took so frickin' long because I had to cut some paragraphs and descriptions. Also Blackwall's flashback refused to come to me for several days. Bloody fickle muses.
> 
> Up next: Half-naked men discussing their feelings in a glade.


	4. Confrontation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A revelation and two confrontations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, half-naked men standing in a glade and talking about their feelings. I don't know why this took me so long to write. Well, beside the snow days (which aren't so fun as a parent) and my brain withholding words from me. Seriously, how do you guys bang out a chapter in a day? And how do you say so much with so little words. I'm goddamn envious!

The Spy Master’s aviary typically bustled with agents at the hour, the circular room warming with whispers amid the sibilant melody of swishing papers exchanging hands. However, this noon offered only the constant _quorking_ of Leliana’s ravens wafting from their rafter perches. The volume of the corvids’ secretive discussions waned as a torrent of disbelief and outrage churned in Ser Cullen’s mind. 

"Run that by me again,” the Commander asked, his tone taut as a garrote. A fresh sting of a headache bloomed behind his eyes.

Leliana preserved the sedate, though slightly annoyed mien she’d given Cullen the first time he asked for a repeat. That all-seeing gaze of hers remained fastened on the knight’s face. Jagged edges of ice chip irises cleaved through his skull, sifting his thoughts, anticipating his reaction once the revelation fully set in. This flinty look alone reminded Cullen why the Spy Master unsettled him so. Especially when he was summoned to these little tête-à-têtes.

She sighed and spoke again, enunciating as though he’d simply misheard her. “I have reason to believe that the man known as Warden-Constable Blackwall is not, in fact, _the_ Warden-Constable Blackwall of Val Chevin. And worse, that perhaps he was never a Grey Warden to begin with.”

Cullen closed his eyes, letting go of the breath he just realized he held through pursed lips. "Then who might he be?”

She stared with same eerily somber countenance and he knew he'd not like the answer. Without a word, Leliana removed a weathered page from beneath her blotter, dropping it on the scuffed desktop between where she stood and Cullen sat.

The moment the knight glanced at it, his breakfast spoiled in his stomach. A beardless, handsome man stared up from the page, but the Commander immediately recognized Blackwall's distinctive eyes and broad features. The artist who etched the engraving must have known the Warden to capture his likeness with such meticulous accuracy. Artistic appreciation aside, why was the Grey Warden staring at him from a bounty hunter's billing? The room tilted on its axis. 

Blackwall had disappeared that morning, gone without a word of where or why. After Cullen finished reprimanding the sentries on last night's roster, one of Leliana’s ravens—the running kind—caught him before he briefed the Inquisitor.

"Who is Thom Rainier and why do Imperial bounty hunters want him?" he asked quietly, now dreading this conversation.

“ _Captain_ Thom Rainier,” Leliana added. "An officer in the Orlesian Army charged with ambushing an Orlesian nobles’s carriage nine years ago. Lord Callier, a staunch ally of Empress Celene. The attack resulted in the slaughter of Callier, his wife, and their three young children.” 

Cullen swallowed back the cold spate of acerbic bile creeping up his throat. “Why would an Orlesian Captain waylay an ally of his Empress?”

“The Great Game, of course,” Leliana explained as though that information were sufficient. “The attack likely had strings tied to Gaspard’s fingers, but those were gossamer at best. The mastermind is believed to be a chevalier by the name of Ser Robert. But the knight killed himself before the city guard arrived to arrest him.”

"And did he?" Cullen probed on, horrified, hoping to the Maker this was all some unfortunate misunderstanding. “Did Blackwall…or this Rainier carryout the attack?”

The Spymaster shifted where she leaned on her desk, crossing her hands across her chest. “One of the men under Rainier's command, who confessed to his involvement in the Callier slaughter, is due for the hangman’s drop. A week ago I planted his execution notice from Val Royeaux in the Adamant brief. Made it appear to be simple slip up of organization,” she explained, waving a dismissive hand in the air at the very idea of such incompetence. “As I anticipated, the notice went missing when I leant the report for Warden Blackwall’s review. The Warden’s demeanor drastically changed after that day. And now the man’s simply vanished. Five days before the execution. Four day to Val Royeaux for a lone rider on a single steed for he couldn’t risk switching mounts at Inquisition posts.”

The blood drained from Ser Cullen’s face. He wiped his hand over numb cheeks in disbelief. This wasn’t right. This couldn’t be right.

"The man talked down a garrison of Wardens from revolt!" Cullen grasped at reason in his tumult of shock. “I was there! I saw it!”

“The same desperate Wardens gullible enough to listen to a Venatori Magister,” Leliana pointed out, a calm counterpoint to Cullen’s rising indignation.

"A week ago?" Cullen asked, the time frame suddenly clicking into cognition. "A blasted week ago? How long have you suspected this man of playing us false?"

"Since the day he arrived in Haven.” Leliana’s imperious mask never cracked despite the admission. “Many forget, I have spent a great deal of time with Wardens. While I may not be privy to their darkest secrets, I know my fair share of Warden lore and ritual not written about in books or sung in taverns. The man never felt right to me, but he served our machinations well enough. Good fighter from what I hear as well.”

Cullen knew little of the Grey Wardens himself. Only that their presence double-edged as both an armed response to calamity or inadvertent harbinger of misfortune. A handful of Wardens visited Kinloch Hold when the tower fell to demons. The ragtag cadre led by the returned Hero of Fereldan and consisted of King Alastair and Leliana herself, all this before fate set them on grander paths. And he had heard a troop of Grey Wardens roamed Kirkwall as the Circle fell, lending their arms to control the madness. However, he'd never actually sat down with a Grey Warden until Ser Blackwall. 

“Does she know?” the Commander asked quietly above his roaring headache, knowing he needn’t specify which _she_.

Lelianna shook her head.

The fugitive not only played them false but crept into the Inquisitor’s bower. Guarded rage roiled in Cullen’s veins like magma seething beneath a dormant volcano. But who was he angrier at? Blackwall for his ruse, Leliana for keeping her suspicions secret, or himself for his failure to detect this wolf’s head’s lies?

"You suspected, no, you _knew_ the man wasn't a genuine Grey Warden. That he was some Orlesian deserter who slaughtered a noble family. Who murdered children… and you didn't see fit to _tell me_?” the Commander growled before his gauntleted fist crashed on the desk. Wood groaned beneath his hand but Leliana never flinched. “Worse, you allowed the man slither next to the Inquisitor's side without informing her of this deception!? What if he had been an assassin sent to infiltrate the Inquisition and kill the Herald of Andraste?!”

"An assassin who by all accounts of spent the last two years in the Hinterlands training stablehands and farmers?” She looked at him, brandishing her incredulous annoyance like a blade. "An assassin who _we_ went in search of without him approaching us first? Frivolous conjecture such as this is why I am Spy Master and you wield the sword. You'd have the Warden sequestered and interrogated before the matter even reached the Inquisitor.”

The knight’s scarred lip quirked in a sneer and he rolled his eyes. Not the first time Leliana or Josephine accused him of being heavy handed. But a brusque touch settled matters swifter than daggers in the dark or obsequious favors.

"And if he wanted to kill the Inquisitor, he had more than enough opportunity to do so last night as she slept beside him.” Leliana’s silvery cold voice scoured down his back.

That stung. The insult to his methods and intelligence was merely a graze, but flaunting the Inquisitor's intimate tryst in the stables cut to the quick. 

“And as for not informing you…” She pushed off from the desk and walked towards the circular balustrade at the room’s center. “You, Ser, show your hand too readily in affairs of the heart. I couldn’t, in good conscious, trust your discretion in this matter.”

The knight grasped for a retort or denial but came up empty handed. Instead, he shielded himself behind a palisade of scowling silence. Leliana sighed. The corners of those sharp eyes softened in an emotion he’d interpret as remorse if he were a fool. 

“Now that the Warden has abandoned our cause, I’ve dropped a few crumbs for the Inquisitor, and she’s following them. She has ordered the horses saddled for Val Royeaux and will be traveling with a small retinue of her choosing.” Leliana explained, sauntering through the aviary with her bard’s grace. “Suspecting what she will stumble upon in Val Royeaux, I want you to ride with her.”

Cullen rubbed his temples, fending of the urge to bash his forehead against the desk. “And do what exactly?” 

After their covert meeting concluded, Cullen walked to the Inquisitor’s quarters with the burden of knowledge crushing upon his shoulders. He ascended her private stairwell in a haze of numbness, an intangible barrier wedged between two other emotions he wished given wide berth. The ravens _quorked_ here as well, singing their secrets and always watching. Leliana had eyes everywhere. No, the softened look on the Spy Master’s face had not been one of remorse. It had been pity.

Numbness deteriorated and the old hurts rose revenant, crawling from crypts he’d sooner forget. Cullen had repurposed heartache into anger, into some cold furnace lodged in his guts which rekindled if he needed that fire. A perpetual cache of fury to push him through battles of both physical and spiritual. Scorching cold to replace the singing of the lyrium in his blood. He wanted to hit something, not send his aide off to pack his riding chest and parcel out tasks to his lieutenants. No, the practice yard beckoned him and his sword hummed in response, begging its master to walk outside and wail at the dinted practice dummies until his arm went limp. Anything to keep the rage fresh.

He’d sooner die a thousand fiery deaths in anger, rising from the ashes, than to wither away beneath the pathetic suffocation of his despondency. But it was too late. His anger wilted and the forlorn, pining fool trickled back in his blood, infecting him with each step closer to her rooms.

The knight closed his eyes, expelling his deplorable vulnerability and mustering some semblance of professionalism. The concerned Commander. Yes, the perfect travel companion. He wore that guise so long and often it fit snugger than any pair of boots. Cullen forced his brow to furrow in rigid concern, unlike the involuntary furrow of unease. All the while the knowledge of Blackwall’s deception buffeted his lips, fighting to escape the second the door opened. He climbed the last stair with his mask in place. After a quick knock and a muffled affirmation, he opened the door.

Lady Nymeria hunched over her desk, shrouded in shade of the dim corner lined with book shelves. Lazy afternoon light poured through latticed windows, stretching diamond shadows across the floor to intersect in front of her like a barrier. The Inquisitor hastily dropped a paper on her desk and flipped it over. 

“Has something happened? Have you brought word of Blackwall?” Her voice brittlely steadfast like grace battered against a shield.

And he stared at her, once again aware of the this woman in ways he cared not to ponder. The hopeless distance of that impossible chasm between them closed and an old wound tore open. Perhaps there was another chance, and the very prospect brought him nothing but trepidation.

“No,” he finally said, the folio of Leliana’s report burning a hole in his surcoat. “I’ve come to inform you that I’ll be joining the excursion to Val Royeaux. It seems I have business to attend to.”

As if the Warden’s dishonesty weren’t enough, the Spy Master had made a liar of him as well.

* * *

Blackwall awoke to the rustle of the tent flaps falling shut. A persistent shaft of rosy light intruded upon the dim and streaked over the empty bedroll across from his own. The warrior carefully untwined his limbs from the slumbering Inquisitor, using no small amount of subterfuge to rise and slip on his breeches and boots before stepping outside. He neglected to notice how musky the tent smelled until he inhaled the crisp fresh air of morning. The potent odor a lingering reminder of all that happened last night behind those canvas walls.

He must talk to him. While Blackwall had once enjoyed the opulent depravity of sowing wild oats in Orlesian orgies, he doubted the ex-Templar shared such comfortably promiscuous impulses. And that was fine, so long as he didn’t turn his virtuous condemnation on Nymeria and shame her as he would himself.

Biting air shivered up his naked back and he regretted disregarding his surcoat. The blushing tendrils of dawn peered through the sparse canopy of bare branches. Yet it would be another hour before the sentries rose for rotation, and at least another hour after that before the rest of party awoke. The only sounds in the still camp were his own boots crunching down the fine veneer of frost encrusting the grass. The harsh noise ruined any attempt at stealth, but at least the trampled boot prints made Cullen easier to track. 

"Strange. Commander Cullen usually performs his lauds alone," one of the sentries remarked to another as they passed Blackwall back to the camp. The knight must have dismissed them early. Good. That meant they’ll have privacy for this awkward little chat.

Blackwall found the Commander kneeling in a small glade only a short walk from the encampment. The knight knelt facing the rising sun, forehead resting on the cross guard of his sword. Whatever prayer, or perhaps act of contrition, he uttered came in murmured plumes of vapor. Burgeoning dawn glimmered in his sleep tousled tresses of his golden hair as the knight kept his head inclined, ignoring the intrusive presence.

After a few minutes silent contemplation, Ser Cullen gestured a holy sign and rose, his movement heavy as though encumbered by the weight of invisible armor. Finally, the man turned to face him. The chill burnished a ruddy flush over his tawny upper body as he too only saw fit to redress in trousers and boot. The shaggy mantle of his sleeveless surcoat bunched bunched his shoulders, exaggerating a trim waist which the older man hadn’t seen on himself in many years. Amber eyes drilled into Blackwall's frost blues, a scathing silent warning as though the stocky warrior were a bear intruding on a lion's den.

"I have nothing to say to you," the knight hissed in a misty cloud through his teeth. The leather of his sword hilt squeaked as his bare fist clenched tighter around it. Perhaps his surcoat wasn’t the only thing Blackwall should have grabbed before this confrontation?

"Then that shall make this mercifully brief," Blackwall said, though the words borne no humor. "I'm here to apologize for last night. It was never my intention too—“

"Shove in my face what I could have had?” Cullen clipped in. "Inspire me to debauch myself in front of the most striking woman in the world and lose whatever scraps of dignity I had left?”

"While I may shoulder a bulk of the blame, let it be said that I was not the one who asked you to swive your hand, Ser." Blackwall pointed out. "The most striking woman in Thedas also happens to be quite wanton. Are you going to shame her the way the Templars taught you to shame yourself?"

"Shame?!" Cullen’s outrage snapped the tense stillness of the tiny clearing like cracking ice. "Templars are not taught shame! We are taught mental restraint to thwart temptation. And rightfully so, lest more knights assert physical advantage over their charges to sate an unrequited, crude longing.” He reguarded Blackwall through an oblique scowl. “And according to the rumors, I heard you prefer your restraints made of leather as opposed to merely mental." 

The two men glowered at one another. Brisk air whispered over anger hot skin but failed to cool the cinders of their resentment. 

"It was never my intention," Blackwall began again after a centering breath, "to put on such a lascivious display. We intended a quick and quiet swive. I don’t care about much restraint you've garnered, you must suffer the same battle lust as any other soldier. You know what it’s like after a fight when all you want to do is comfort yourself in the sweeter aspects of living.”

"Yes, but if it cannot ignored, then I relieve myself in private,” Cullen said and instantly grimaced at what he just admitted to. 

"Would you rather relieve yourself with your hand behind some tree if Nym waited for you in your bedroll all feisty and warm?" 

"Wouldn't know as I've never had the privilege, unlike you.” Ser Cullen snarled the last two words. “And just because I spent twenty years in the Order or refuse to slip under every skirt fluttering my way, doesn’t render me some priggish tight-arse lording over the modesty of others. I’d never shame Nymeria for her dalliances. Maker’s breath, I happened upon the two you sneaking out from behind tapestry at the Winter Ball and laughed it off. But that doesn’t mean I wish to be constantly reminded of what my hesitation cost me.”

The anger receded from the younger man’s eyes, bramble pulling back to reveal raw misery. Blackwall’s own irritation guttered out beneath a spate of guilt. He so readily ascribed Ser Cullen to the rigors of his Order, assuming the knight to be a canting prat. The Commander often wore so much armor that Blackwall failed to see past the plate to the good man inside. Guilt racked the older man in spades.

"Look,” Blackwall said, voice easing at the loss of his indignation. “Terrible as it looked, I never intended to flaunt Nym as though I won her.” He scratched beneath his beard, dithering over whether to leave the conversation at that or throw propriety to the four winds. “You could have joined in, if Nym allowed.”

And there it was. The bawdy suggestion which couldn’t be unsaid.

“Is that what your little gesture meant last night?” The knight’s eyebrows shot to his hairline. Stubbled cheeks flushed darker than the biting air could be responsible for. “I mean, you certainly weren’t suggesting I—that we…”

Blackwall shrugged. “If Nym had desired it, then I’d be willing. Such as I tried to convey by nodding at her.”

“Then why not say it aloud instead of cryptic gestures?” the knight asked in his frustration.

“Because coming right out and stamping my signet of approval seemed a trite callous. As though I offered up Nym as one does a piece of meat on a silver platter. I’d never want her to feel that way. She’s queen of the realm in my eyes, and her happiness is a measure of my own. If she wanted you as you wanted her, you’re not to hesitate on my behalf.” 

The knight’s bare fingers rasped over the thick shadow of his stubble. “Maker's breath, I've rebuffed desire demons less enticing than Lady Trevelyan." His tongue swept over the tail of his lip scar. "All thoughts of reputation or propriety shriveled the second she bade me. That look alone made me feel as if I were only man in all of Thedas. Which is a testament to her impeccable persuasion given the intimate circumstances.” 

"My lady has that effect. Funny enough, I don't think she realizes the extent of her power. " Blackwall said, his tone lightening for the first time since they’d started speaking. "And perhaps it was crude, but I enjoyed last night. I could tell that she did as well."

"Erm, you could?" Ser Cullen looked askance, shifting from one foot to another.

"She still fancies you, Commander. Nym denies it anytime I've brought it up, but I see the way you two look at one another" The words held no heat, only frank recognition. "It was always going to be either you or I, Cullen. And believe me, while I'm grateful for her affection, even I’m aware she played the wrong hand." 

"She refused to talk to me for the entire ride from Val Royeaux,” Cullen said, diverting on some tangent. “She was furious with me for leaving you there. For insisting we return to Skyhold to plot the next course of action. We could've just as easily broke you out, or took you as an Inquisition prisoner."

"Or perhaps leave me fester in an Orlesian cell with the noose's kiss brushing my nape,” Blackwall suggested.

“I’d be lying if I denied considering such course,” the knight admitted without hesitation. “But ultimately the decision was hers, and hers alone. Lady Nymeria tends to make rash decisions amid personal matters. All I wanted was for her to contemplate the ramifications of her actions. Which is why I offered to lead troops to storm the jail."

Blackwall cringed at the idea. "You wouldn’t. No, I'd never want that! Terrible enough some poor, traitorous blighter died in my stead, let alone tried and true soldiers."

"If the Inquisitor bade me to do so, I would oblige her. But my true intention was for her to fathom the gravity of the precarious situation _you_ put her in." Anger rekindled in his eyes like lambent chunks of red agate. "But we both know that no matter what, she'd never leave you behind to rot.”

"And you could have nipped this all in the bud. Stopped all of it by taking the initiative instead of waiting for her to advance you,” Blackwall accused, pointing his finger at the knight. “Do you know how fucking perplexed I was that she'd even give me the time of day, let alone make several passes at me? I'd watch you two across the yard, she’d say something probably very sweet and a little suggestive. Only to stand there as you leaf through some papers and walk off. Then she'd come to me, seeking the affection _you_ denied her. Why is that, Commander? Does it have something to do with Cole's ramblings about syringes and blue weeds?"

The question bristled the knight. The mantle rose on his tensing shoulders like prickled hackles upon an ornery beast’s back. “Just because you'd vaunt your personal affairs doesn't mean I must do the same," Cullen snarled.

"It's the lyrium, isn't it?" Blackwall guessed and noticed the Commander’s scarred mouth press in an austere line. "I've been all over Thedas. Whether soldiering or mercenary work, what ever means I sought to throw myself at death. And everywhere near a Circle or Templar Keep, the townspeople talked. Even seen a peculiar encounter myself."

"Townspeople always talk. If only they could fertilize the fields with their incessant prattle, then no mouth would ever want for food,” Cullen said bitterly, folding his toned arms over his bare chest, unbothered by the cold. "They also talk of Grey Wardens and whisper of a man named Rainier. Doesn't make anything true."

"Ah," Blackwall humored him. "So watching four Templars subdue one belligerent old knight must have been a figment of moldy bread. That his raving of needing lyrium to make the demons disappear was a cleverly contrived scenario by a group of bards with penchant for fancy armor.”

Ser Cullen clothed himself in his reticence. Despite the knight’s still waters of fortitude, Blackwall perceived the faintest ripple of disquiet break across the otherwise smooth expanse.

"It's like the red lyrium, but not as potent. Isn't it?” the warrior pressed on. “But it still alters a man and the cure also becomes the ailment."

The Commander's stoic fortitude cracked. He ran his fingers through his disheveled hair. A restlessness took him, driving the knight to pace to and fro in the small glade. 

"The lyrium grants a knight resistance to magic and advantage in restraining mages. But as with all power, it’s addictive and levies a heavy toll. But every Templar must take it as we have no arcane abilities of our own. The only legal source of the lyrium is through the Chantry. It’s administered in various forms. A refined dust, a draught…” Ser Cullen paused, absently rubbing the inside crook of his elbow. “Other ways. Gradually, the substance becomes as crucial to a knight’s effects as his sword and shield. However, take the lyrium long enough and it muddles the senses, can render you a shade of the person you once were, even kill you if you stop taking it.”

“Maker, Cullen.” Blackwall felt his ruddy cheeks pale. “And you—”

“I’ve stopped,” he interjected before Blackwall finished his sentence. The younger knight looked at him with the haunted eyes of a man past his years. A man who’s seen too much. “I stopped once I joined the Inquisition and Lady Nymeria knows this. She and Cassandra have been privy to the depths of my struggle. Supported me even at my worst. Just when I exhausted my willpower to the dregs, Nymeria leant me some her infamous obstinance.” A warm, albeit sad smirk turned his lips. “Not sure why. I’d be more useful if I were on the lyrium. If anything, I’m being selfish by putting her and the Inquisition through my wish to snip the Chantry’s last tether upon me.” 

The taller man paced away, rubbing his lip with the back of his hand, as though embarrassed by the revelation his candor exacted. “And this is what I have to offer the Inquisitor. A fine medley of traumas, burdens, and lyrium withdrawal.” 

Blackwall stared at him for a long moment, as if seeing the Commander for the very first time. “Maker’s balls, our Inquisitor has piss poor taste in men."

Cullen laughed at that and Blackwall joined him. 

"Where is our Lady Trevelyan?” the Commander asked and swapped his sword into his other hand. “She doesn't strike me as a woman who’d send you to ask after me?"

"She is not, but she _is_ a heavy sleeper. I came here of my own volition, and now I feel like an absolute arse for my petty assumptions.”

Ser Cullen rolled the tension from his shoulders. “Don’t trouble yourself. All of those assumptions rang true when I was a young man.”

Blackwall chuckled at that. He’d never asked for the Commander’s age, but guessed the man wasn’t a day past thirty six. Tokens of his suffering wrinkled in the corners of his eyes and furrowed his brow, yet grooves of laugh lines bracketed his wide mouth. The knight had some youth left in him yet. 

“As I said, she fancies you. My asinine judgements aside, I’m suggesting we treat this like any other morning. Allow Nym to navigate the course of this,” Blackwall rubbed his hands over his arms, staving off the ripple of goosebumps. 

"So you’re telling me that burrowing into the wain of salted ram and hiding there until we arrive at Skyhold isn't an option?" The smile reached his voice but not on his lips. Cullen laid his sword down and buried his face in his hands. "Why is this never easy? In all the stories man meets woman and they fall in love. Perhaps there's a rival but it's always a clear cut. The raffish man becomes the odd man out so the hero wins thy lady's hand."

Blackwall laughed. "When thy lady in question's hand binds rifts in the Fade, matters are doomed to get a little dodgy. Although, you're more hero than I, if that offers any clarity."

"I'd suggest she could have both of us, but I wouldn't wish such misfortune on any woman,” the knight jested, offering his lopsided smirk.

Instead of another peal of robust laughter, the Blackwall raised an eyebrow and scratched beneath his beard. “Not a bad idea, really.”

Cullen's eyes widened once he realized the warrior was serious. "You can't possibly be considering that preposterous, and might I add scandalous idea. They already talk. Imagine the rumors if that were to ever come to light?"

"You mean like the ones that will circulating because the two of us are standing half-naked in a glade talking about our feelings?” Blackwall shrugged. "Talk's talk. Happens whether it happens or not. The Commander sharing a tent with the Inquisitor and her paramour? Scandal has been stirred over much less.”

"Enlightening,” Cullen said dryly. "Are you truly suggesting we share Lady Trevelyan? A dignified woman of her stock would never tolerate that."

“Not when you speak of her like some pelt, she won’t.” Blackwall said. “You may have known my lady longer, but I know her better. A woman has needs and Nym's constantly push the gamut. Andraste’s arse, I may not survive her on my own.” He rubbed his slightly aching small of his back.

"And you...you’d tolerate such cuckoldry?" Cullen asked, stunned.

"In Orlais, it's only cuckoldry if the bloke don’t know about it…or if he’s availed his own body to his wife’s lover for her viewing pleasure.” Blackwall spoke so candidly of vulgar acts that Cullen grimaced. "I know Nym loves me, and I love her like the sun burns over the Western Approach, but I could tell she wanted something else last night. 

“But my intentions are not born solely of lust,” Cullen growled, affronted by the suggestion. “Not to say I’ve never indulged my baser beast, but those times left a sour taste in my mouth. When you left for Val Royeaux, I had hoped…” he trailed off, his eyes seeking distraction in the gentle rustle of the bare branches of the surrounding wood. “I had hoped there would be another chance. That perhaps with a little more time, I’d be a man worthy of a woman such as her. Only her.”

“That’s your first mistake, Commander,” Blackwall said, wearing his own sad smile now. “Thinking there’s time. Such is not guaranteed to anyone, especially people like us.” 

Blackwall sighed, rough and tired. He supposed the time had come to confide in the Commander as the knight did with him. “There's something I'm going to disclose and it cannot reach Nym. Do you understand? I want neither hide nor hair of this outside this clearing.”

A tension tightened around Cullen’s eyes but he nodded. “Understood.” 

“Lately I’ve been mulling over joining the Grey Wardens once all this is over." A partial weight lifted from Blackwall’s shoulders at hearing the confession aloud and not knocking about in his head. 

“That’s not necessary” the knight rushed to dissuade. “You’ve proven yourself—“

"To everyone _except_ myself. Now, I may not even survive the Joining ritual. Yet if I do, the Warden’s Calling will visit upon me in perhaps ten or fifteen years. Sooner if I'm not as hale. I'd join in better conscious knowing I left Nym in capable hands."

"Not to sound ungrateful, but what if you survive the Joining?” Cullen waved his hand to the side. “We work out some attached living scenario? All sounds a little selfish of everyone involved."

"Only selfish of you and I. In the olden times, Nym would’ve been gifted a stable very willing, very virile men for all she's done. Women too if she so desired. And our Inquisitor doesn't deserve anything less,” Blackwall explained.

"A stable of men?" A familiar, crisp voice spoke from the treeline, startling the two soldiers. “I’ve enough trouble keeping track of one man. He has a penchant for disappearing as I sleep."

The scowl upon her face told of her unhappy awakening. The Inquisitor leant against a spindly sapling with her arms crossed over her chest. Sunlight gleamed off the arched pauldrons of her light armor, making her the most heavily garbed person standing in the clearing.

"Maker's balls, woman. How do you move over frosted grass in full armor with barely a broken stalk?" Blackwall griped.

"The loudest rogues tend to have the briefest careers,” Nymeria said, not taking her eyes off either of them. "So care to explain why you two are selfish and why I deserve a stable of virile men?”

* * *

The Inquisitor’s tower sat quiescent except for the occasional settling timber and chatty raven. He'd just cleared the first staircase when angry, gauntleted fists clutched his quilted coat and thrust his back into the unrelenting stone wall. 

"Come to barter back what little dignity you have left, Warden?" Ser Cullen snarled, so close the man’s hot breath brushed his lips. Torchlight glimmering in the smooth fissure of scar tissue above his sneering mouth. "Or should I call you Captain Rainier?" 

His former title marinated in at least a week’s worth of venom. Rough masonry jabbed between Blackwall’s shoulder blades and dug into the small of his back. The discomfort of being pressed to the craggy wall second only to the clacking of his teeth each time the knight jostled him in anger. Couldn’t he just hit him and get it over with?

The disgraced soldier tolerated the abuse for a scant few moments before shoving the knight off in brusque efficiency. "Call me what you will, Ser. I do not expect any appellation to be kind. And I’ve only just dropped something off. Perhaps you'll have a new sword by morning? Assuming you've leapt at the chance to comfort Lady Trevelyan in my absence.”

That disdainful sentiment riled the taller man. Now Cullen fumed, rage thrumming through his pinched brows like a drawn trebuchet. He jabbed Blackwall in the chest with his finger. “She trusted you. We all trusted you. And you spat in her face with your fraudulence. And yet, the Inquisitor drew from her seemingly bottomless reservoir of mercy and pardoned you." He shook his head in disgusted disbelief.

Blackwall let Cullen berate him. If the knight wasn't spewing his diatribe, then the crackling torches and whistling winds eagerly occupied the tight silence where Blackwall remained reluctant to speak. The detail of guards had escorted him three hard days ride from Val Royeaux, most of which Blackwall spent fettered in a wain that rocked with every stray stone. His back pained him, his wrists chafed, his dignity tattered, and a thick crust of dirt from both prison and road clogged every crease and cleft of his body. So if the former Templar wanted to browbeat him, then he'd let him do so. Arguing only kept Blackwall longer from a hot bath and the oblivion of sleep.

"Do you have nothing to say in your defense?" The Commander finally asked in his fury, and might as all have prodding him with a hot poker.

"I've said my peace at the trial this morn. There's nothing to say to you which will absolve me of my misdeeds or relinquish me from my past." Blackwall shoved past the knight, ignoring the sharp impact of the knight’s pauldron and rerebrace against his own unprotected shoulder. “Congratulations, Commander. You’re the better man. But at least I had the balls to love her."

Either Ser Cullen ran out of things to say, or his words choked him in the tide of his scorn, restoring the silence of the Inquisitor's tower. Blackwall descended the rest of the stairs and stepped into the Great Hall, slamming the door behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why do I write so much?
> 
> Up next: Some explaining to do as well fire and blood.


	5. The Great Escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some escapes are more graceful than others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so here's this leviathan of a chapter. I should have know it would be doozy when Cullen's flashback surpassed 2K words. But hey, nostalgic smut! And let it be known I kind of love writing the escapades of Lieutenant Thom Rainier. So much easier before he grew his broody beard!

Ten years of dues jingled in his coin pouch, a leather bag not only weighted with silver and gold but blood and agony. Was this one bag the only tangible sum of his suffering? No matter. Without hearth or home, Cullen had little opportunity to spend it now that he accepted a position in the Seeker’s Inquisition. No more Circles meant no more Templars. He’d tried to restore order as best he could, but his measures had as much effect as trying to douse the Kirkwall Chantry’s flames by spitting upon them. Those fires died months ago, yet the smell of burning wood infused every breath Cullen took.

A carrack lingered in the harbor, its entire crew and all passengers awaiting him to settle his remaining business. He’d need a new helm, he informed Seeker Cassandra. Not something with a flaming sword insignia nor the eye of the Inquisition, nor any symbol other people wished to stamp upon him. After twenty years with the Order, the Knight-Captain, no, it was Commander now, forged his own identity.

“Most of my husband’s inventory was either doled out during the riots or shipped to his brother’s shop in Starkhaven. I’ve only kept the odd bits and bobs before we close up for good.” The smith’s wife explained as she led Cullen through the sparse, narrow store. Wooden dressing dummies fell in rank along a threadbare crimson runner, their bodies bare except for scuffs and fine dust. “But if you’re only looking for a helm, than you might be in luck.” 

She guided Cullen to a tiny storeroom lit solely by a single lantern dangling from the ceiling. Years of dust kicked into the air as she dragged out a small crate and pried the lid from it. Whatever the craft, the smith took great care in swathing the helm in delicate sheets of black velvet. 

“My husband crafted this years ago. Was commissioned by some Orlesian chevalier until his payments tapered off. Still a very fine piece. Hemon put a lot of pride in it.” She fondly brushed her fingers across a burnished snout peeking from beneath the velvet. “But there’s no point in keeping it now.”

He had to admit, the lion helm looked a bit more garish than he intended on purchasing. Its ferocious maw roared in eternal silence replete with shaggy mane sprouting out the helm’s back. Yet there was no denying Cullen enjoyed the flashy confidence once he held the metalwork in his hands.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Cullen said for probably the third time since learning of the blacksmith’s demise. He thumbed over the maker’s mark along the inside, paying the deceased man a strange memorial.

A closed, wistful smile twitched at the corners of the widow’s mouth. “No need to be sorry, Ser. Hemon died doing what he always wished he could. Tales of knights fascinated the man, but my husband had neither the means nor the skill to become one. How is that, you think? To have a farrier's skills but unable to wield what you create?" She continued, not expecting an answer. "When the madness swept the streets, he distributed weapons and lead a militia. Died a hero, like so many others that day.” An unshed sheen of tears gleamed in her hazel eyes. “But enough talk of ghosts. Let’s see how the helm fits.” 

Cullen stared through the jagged slot, the world reduced to a fanged frame which generously granted him peripheral vision. The lion helm alleviated some of the claustrophobia problematic to his Templar helm. Most knights expected to sacrifice peripheral vision for protection of their fragile temples, but the smith sought a solution in this extravagant design, thinking beyond the sleek lines of a narrow eye slot.

“I’ll take it,” Cullen said, pulling the helm from his head. Regardless of the stunning design, he felt a bit silly standing there in a tunic and breeches wearing a lion’s head. 

“Aye. Then let us settle the payment over a nip of whiskey,” she tempted with a grin and Cullen’s chest inexplicably tightened.

Despite the few silver strands gleaning in her chestnut hair, the blacksmith’s widow couldn’t have been much older than Cullen. She possessed a tired sort of beauty as all tradesman’s wives, wearing lines of exhaustive grief while a lustrous vivacity endured in her eyes. 

It started with the whiskey. Then she inquired if he had anyone special he left the Order for. The answer, of course, came as a resounding negative and Cullen shot back another tot the smoky amber liquid. The discussion rambled on, mostly pertaining to voluble details about sending her children onto Starkhaven. Gradually, the widow found reasons to reach across the narrow dining table and touch his arm, giggling at Cullen’s staid attempts of gentlemanly decorum. A curled hank of her chestnut hair twirled around her finger as she wet her plump lips. The knight had no idea older women still fell back upon the flirtatious ploys of their youth, but blast, the tactic was working. His mind urged caution, but the rest of his anatomy endorsed fleeting carnal delight. Anything to distract from the past ravages and uncertain future stretching before him.

Emboldened by his blushing consternation, the widow rose and stood between his open legs where Cullen sat upon a low stool. Dainty fingers played at the laces of her tight bodice. “You know, Ser, I’ve always been curious about Templars. I’ve heard whispers of legendary stamina on both the battlefield and the bower.” She plucked the laces, loosening the front panel of her bodice to fall ever so slightly forward.

“There’s a ship waiting for me,” Cullen dissuaded himself as much as her. “When I board it, it’s taking me from Kirkwall never to return. This…This fling—you’d never see me again.”

“Good,” she said, tugging the neckline of the dress down her shoulders. “That makes matters less complicated.” 

Cullen lost what little remained of his resolve when her ample bosom spilled from her bodice. Dusky capped breast heavy from childbirth hung unfettered within reach. Maker when was the last time he’d even been in the same room as a bare-chested woman? Much less, had a woman so brazenly flaunt her breasts inches from his face? He’d left the Order, and his duty to Inquisition resumed upon landing in Fereldan. This voyage promised as much of a furlough he’s had in the twenty years of training and knighthood. Yet it seemed oddly selfish all the same.

But fifteen years of rankled solitude and self-imposed abstinence crashed upon him. All thoughts of propriety obliterated, and blood impulse drove his mouth to fasten upon the nipple, eliciting a rough moan from the woman standing before him. His cheeks burned fever hot against her smooth skin. Cullen had shelved his needs so long that he’d forgotten what lust tasted like. Salt and copper, the warmth of the blood surging beneath her pale skin. His prick swelled, painfully constricted in his breeches. He started to unlace his fly until hesitation undermined his ardor.

“It’s—it’s been awhile. A long while.” Cullen held her away, staring up into her face to ensure she understood him. “I’m no man of skill. Maker’s breath, I barely remember what to do.”

That brought about another girlish giggle. She ran her questing hands over his chest, down his stomach, stooping over to cup the eager part of him. At least his prick remembered exactly what was required, standing alert and ready for action like a good soldier. Chestnut curls poured over her shoulder, redolent of vanilla and scorched wood in this close proximity. The widow’s lips quirked in a amorous grin. “It’s all rather easy. You seem like a sharp man, Ser. I’m sure you’ll figure it out once we get started.”

Something about her teasing tone both enflamed and enraged. With a growl, Cullen shoved the rest of her chemise down her broad hips, taking peculiar satisfaction in the hissing rip of fabric. The woman stared down at him, eyes gone round at his capriciousness. To the Void, if he was doing this, than he’d surrender to the long ignored urges of his greedy desire. The knight heaved the woman bodily onto the table, scraping his teeth down her lithe throat and returning his attention to her puckered nipples. Luscious thighs splayed at his silent command, hooking over his shoulders as he dived mouth first into her sodden, pink folds. 

Lacking recent experience, Cullen focused on swirling his tongue along the swollen nub at the apex of her nether lips. The woman rutted against his mouth all the same, begging for an assortment of lewd acts. Most of those acts he’d only ever read about in tawdry literature confiscated from the recruits’ barracks.

His lips abandoned her quim and she whined, pathetic in her need for his touch. But in this moment, he fathomed little except his own lust. His own fire threatened to consume him as the long dormant beast thrashed to life in its cage. Cullen finished yanking his laces open, giving his prick only a few precious seconds of freedom before sheathing himself inside the wanton woman supine upon the table. His breeches rucked about his knees and his tunic’s hem bunched beneath his chin, keeping it out of the way of their hasty joining. Ultimately, the tunic proved troublesome. Cullen whipped the intrusive garment over his shoulders and discarded it.

Each inexorable thrust landed hard, a wet smack of hips impacting the cradle of her thighs. Her little mewlings and cries of _Ser Cullen_ mingled with his labored grunts. Distantly, as if a whisper on a howling wind, he realized he never learned this woman’s name. Each buck of his hips slackened the chains leashing his amorous beast, sating the wanton hunger he’d denied himself as drowned in the drudgery of service and routine.

Cullen couldn’t keep this maddening pace. He ‘d spend if he didn’t slow down, and the last thing he needed was a brief repeat of his first time. Mustering his restraint with a heaping breath, the knight’s hips stilled against her. The woman bucked in irritation. 

“What are you doing?! Fuck me!” she cried out, demanding. The very look in her eyes forswore its coquettish longing and now burned acute and irascible.

Cullen snarled. Uncoupling from the tight heat of her body, he hauled her off the table and spun her around, pushing the woman chest down on the scuffed tabletop. He plunged back inside her, so deep and fast that she gasped beneath him. The woman clutched the table’s edge, her white knuckles stark against the dark polish. His own fingers dug into her plush hips, steading her body as he hammered inside with unrelenting force. 

“Harder! Maker’s cock, that’s it!” she bade him.

Her end came mercifully before his own. Those hazel eyes clenched shut and the sweet tightness of her velvet heat constricted and crushed around his cock. She cried out. Only it wasn’t his name upon her lips. “Maker, yes! Hemon! Fill me your seed!”

Blood drained from Cullen’s cheeks. Fiery lust reduced to cold ash. Still, his own orgasm persevered. His cock mechanically pumped inside her body, but whatever frantic emotional connection knit between them sliced away the moment she yelled her late husband’s name. Cullen stumbled back, disoriented, and leaned upon a rough-hewn wooden pillar for support.

They dressed in silence. Dazed, he removed the proper amount of coin from his pouch. Gilt edges clattered upon the table regardless of how gently his trembling hand set them down. Sustaining their silence, Cullen tucked the velvet wrapped lion helm in the crook of his arm and walked through the shop, leaving her without a word of parting. Smoky tinged air caressed his sweaty face the moment he opened the shop door. He’d make for the wharf now. There was nothing left for him here.

The elongated shadow of mid-morning clung heavy to his heels. The knight trudged through the detritus of both city and populace, his jaded expression now kindred to the desolation of the survivors meandering around him. All of them ghosts, drifting and haunting the streets of ruined Kirkwall. 

_At least I lasted longer this time,_ was his only thought as the carrack’s mast loomed over the burnt out rooftops.

* * *

Maker, they made her cold just looking at them. At least Blackwall had the courtesy to look miserable with his hands tucked into his armpits. But Cullen stood there, his impervious posture immune to shivers or a chattering teeth. Damn Fereldens and their bloody cold tolerance.

The pair also looked entirely too guilty. Yet the fact that two handsome men—both attractive in such drastically different ways—stood shirtless in a glade compromised the Inquisitor’s deductive reasoning more than she’d ever admit to. So Nymeria tossed aside cunning settled on playing the strong arm.

"Anyone care to answer my question? Or are you two willing to sleep outside tonight? Both of you were so quick to sneak off and discuss me behind my back, that I suppose you’ll just adore cozying up in a bedroll beneath the stars?” The steely tang of her voice cut to the bone. 

"Nymeria," Cullen said, before rushing to amend, “Inquisitor, suffice it to say it was never my intention to hold such a meeting. I merely came out here for my lauds and was followed." He shot a side long scowl at Blackwall.

Blackwall sighed and scratched his ruddy nose. "Alright. Honestly? I came to clear the air about what happened last night.”

Her stony mask sustained, if not for a fresh patina of a blush. "You mean for showing off?"

The warrior scoffed. "Do not try to play demure, my lady. After all, you’re the one who asked the Commander to demonstrate his one-handed sword technique."

Aforementioned Commander’s cheeks changed from healthy, cold-kissed red to a sickly jaundice. He closed his eyes and massaged his temples. “I ought have just kept my eyes shut and pretended that you two weren't coupling like rabbits within arms reach.”

"What kind of rabbits have you been watching?" Blackwall jested indignantly. “Awfully limber ones I suppose."

“Blackwall, you’re not helping,” Nymeria lobbed a glare of warning at her paramour.

The burly warrior showed his palms in surrender. “As I was previously explaining to the Commander, you deserve whatever your little heart desires. Even if that desire leads you into another man’s bed.”

Nymeria’s eyebrows lifted an inch as subdued shock mingled with disbelief. “Pardon?”

“I know you carry a torch for the man.” Blackwall gestured towards the increasingly mortified knight. “And I hope you know me well enough to anticipate that I’d do whatever you wanted. Anything to ensure your happiness. Is that arrangement something you’d be interested in?” 

Blackwall was right. Blushing and playing the timid Chantry girl didn’t suit her. She encroached on the clearing but maintained a distance, treading just as carefully in the linguistic sense as well. “I’d be a liar if I claimed the idea didn’t intrigue me. But it seems we ought to all be in agreement. Cullen? Thoughts?”

She watched as the Commander’s posture fluctuated between square shouldered obstinance and the endeavor to fold himself as small as possible. 

“Maker’s breath, this sounds worse with you standing right there.” He raked a hand through his disheveled golden locks and avoided direct eye contact. “I just…I’m uncertain. It’s been a long time since I’ve had anyone in the way you’re implying. And the last thing I’d ever want is to contaminate our relationship by…disappointing you.” He looked over at her, beleaguered in his diffidence.

“Cullen, have you ever witnessed me throw my colleague’s shortcomings in their face? You and Blackwall of all people ought to know this.” She stepped towards him, drawing his eye and demanding his attention with force of her presence alone. “For all it’s worth, I’ve never done anything like last night either. So we’re both sculling over uncharted waters.” She fortified her honest words with a feeble smile.

Some of the tightness in his muscles slackened at that revelation. Cullen scratched his stubble and turned, pacing away for breathing room. 

“Would it be like last night?” Cullen pressed on despite his obvious discomfort with the words. “Would either of us be there, er, watching the festivities?”

Nymeria closed the gap between them as one approaches a skittish animal. She shook her head. “It doesn’t have to be. Not if it makes you uncomfortable.”

Cullen shifted his attention to Blackwall in time to catch the lazy lift and fall of his bulky shoulders. “Maker knows last night was a drop in the bucket compared to the depravity I dipped my tail into as a younger man. That being said, Commander, if you’d like to watch, join, polish your sword, it matters not to me. But I’ll not assume the same relaxed conditions with you. You want privacy? Don’t fret over asking me to make myself scarce.”

They had lost track of time through the course of their awkward negotiations. The sun peeked higher over the trees and the light matured from a ruddy dawn to golden morning light. Rimed grass glittered with the first beads of thawed dew. The three of them all but shut out the rest of world, yet wetly tramping footsteps ushered the burdens of responsibility back upon them.

“We’ll continue this conversation later,” Nymeria said low enough to reach only the ears of the two men involved.

“Commander Cullen?” a young voice asked. One of Cullen’s aides approached from the treeline, taking in the scene with obvious bewilderment. “Ser, erm, would you like your morning status reports now…or is this a bad time?”

The Commander heaved a labored sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Report, Briggs.”

The hatchet faced young man’s shoulders shot back in perfect posture befitting a Templar. He couldn’t have been anymore than a year or two from having performed his vigil, Nymeria surmised. More gangly than muscle beneath the plate armor. Was Cullen ever gangly, she wondered? The uncertain hesitance coloring the young knight’s rigid stance distracted her from the previous thought. Insecurity twitched at the corners of Briggs’ mouth despite his lips pressing hard into a bloodless line. 

“Commander, Inquisitor, the extraction and containment team arrived back a few hours past midnight. The red lyrium has been loaded into a wain and awaits transportation.” Ser Briggs forehead creased beneath the strain of unsaid information.

“And?” Cullen impatiently prodded the young knight along. 

“Erm, half the camp’s roused earlier than usual, Ser. The soldiers claim they hear the red lyrium _singing_. It’s giving them headaches and turning stomachs, Ser. Some have even succumbed to retching from the noise alone.” The fledgling knight fidgeted from one sabaton to the other. “According to the containment specialist, there’s an over abundance of the fell mineral so the sound cannot be helped. Usual yields barely take up one crate, but we’ve mined an entire wagon full. Everyone’s on edge, Ser. Even the horses go skittish around it. The ostler’s say they’re reduced to employing two deaf old destriers instead of pack horses to tug the load.”

The Commander rubbed his hand over his mouth, looking years older in his weary exasperation. “Inquisitor, let it be said that I’ll not ride all the way to Skyhold with that infernal cacophony ringing in my ears. I doubt any of my troops would agree to do so either.”

Nymeria and Blackwall exchanged another one of their silent, brief conversations. Her words came level with an undercurrent of diplomatic fatigue. “Put the red lyrium wain at the front of the supply train. My company shall hold the front. Commander, your troops shall march at the procession’s rear. Is that satisfactory?”

The Commander breathed an vapored sigh of relief. “Yes. Very good. Thank you, Inquisitor. But won’t the noise bother you or anyone else in your ennead?”

She smiled, warm without a trace of her previous frustration. “If we can tolerate Viv and Dorian’s bickering, then I believe we’ll brave the hum of the red lyrium just fine. Although Varric might wish to join your soldiers at the rear. So don’t get too cozy in your solitude.” 

Briggs armor clattered as he rested his hands behind the small of his back. “Erm, breakfast is ready for you, Commander. Mors knows you usually take your meal after lauds and told me to tell you that it’s getting cold…Ser.”

“Ah, am I being called down to breakfast, Briggs?” Cullen said and Nymeria detected the dry playfulness in his tone.

The aide noticeably began sweating. “No, Ser. I mean, it’s ready for whenever you wish to eat it, Ser. Certainly Mors didn’t—I didn’t mean—“

“Easy, Briggs.” The ex-Templar wore his typical crooked smirk, instantly disarming the anxious young man of his unease. After bending to retrieve his sword, Ser Cullen clapped the young man on the back, the perfect picture of stout confidence requisite to the Inquisition’s commander. “Come along, Ser Briggs. Let us leave the Inquisitor and Blackwall to their privacy.” He turned towards Nymeria, wearing the faint cracks of discord in his cool demeanor. “I’ll inform the Quartermaster of the changes to the convoy’s configuration, Inquisitor.”

She watched the two shapes disappear behind the tangle of trees. Beyond the relative peace of this clearing, her head whirled with the personal matters discussed. “Well, this certainly isn’t how I predicted my morning would go upon climbing into bed last night.”

Blackwall snorted in a laugh. “Aye. Life spirits you to some strange, and hilariously awkward destinations along the way.” He rubbed his fuzzy arms, gazing warmly at her despite the chill. “I’m sorry I chose to confront him without you. But I worried how Cullen would react. Most Chantry folks seem to teeter on a knife edge of embracing the carnal call or shaming those who indulge themselves. No matter how much respect I have for his station and person, I’d still feed him his perfect white teeth if he ever tried to disparage you.”

“Now, now, play nice, darling,” Nymeria cooed, clasping her hands behind his neck. “While I appreciate the brusque fervor of your devotion, I can defend myself all by my lonesome. In title and in battle.”

“I’d hate to bear witness to a bloke who underestimated my lady’s skills,” Blackwall matched her airy tone, drawing her close and relaxing against her clothed body heat. He lowered his eyes, looking rather sheepish compared to his previous ironclad bravado. “Aye, but I suppose you have the right of it” 

“Come along, darling. Let’s warm you up.” She nipped him on the tip of his florid, chilled nose, shivering against him. “My nipples feel as pointy as arrowheads.”

“My lady, if you insist on talking about your nipples, then I’ll ensure you’re plenty warm before we make it back to camp,” he teased her in a broad, guileless grin. 

****

 _“Fuck me, Cullen, please, I need you to fuck me!”_ The words echoed in the Commander’s head with the same clarity as she spoke them last night. Several recitations of Threnodies 5 failed to dislodge the compelling memory of her face drawn tight in orgasm. A ghost her feminine fragrance somehow lingered despite the very real scent of horse sweat and loamy, trodden mud. 

_Then the Maker said: To you, my second-born, I grant this gift: In your heart shall burn an unquenchable flame. All-consuming, and never satisfied._

No, the verses weren’t helping in the least.

The column trekked along the dirt road, flanked by the monotony of trees save for a strip of somber gray sky carved above them. Gone were the incensed, purling storm clouds of the previous morning, swapped for a silver curtain, diffusing the sunlight through a delicate screen of gloom. This march crawled compared to the advance on the shrine of Dumat. The venture further complicated by the red lyrium wain, his isolation from the Inquisitor, and the stubborn cockstand straining the front of breeches. The unruly appendage persisted long past painful with little opportunity to relieve himself. Ser Cullen could hardly take a piss without an aide or scout skulking up, much less wrap his hand around his prick and stroke himself to temporary relief. If only his Inquisitor lavished such stealthy attention. He thought about her catching him, watching with the same rapt attention as the previous night.

 _”Oh my, Ser Cullen. Would you like some help with that?"_ She'd flash that naughty grin as her hands…

“Well I’ll be a nug’s uncle," Varric’s gravelly voice broke his erotic fantasy. The dwarf must have tired of spinning yarns and reined beside him at some point. "That's the first smile I've seen on you all day. It's like the clouds have torn open and the sun’s shining. Careful, Curly, you might blind me."

Cullen cleared his throat and squirmed in his saddle, vainly attempting to assuage his erection. "Thought you said I needed to smile more often, Varric?"

The dwarf shrugged his broad shoulders, flashing his roguish smirk which reeked of mischief. "No offense, Curly. It looks good on you. Was beginning to think the Inquisitor and Hero make raucous roommates and kept you awake all night."

Cullen felt his cheeks burning and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Maker, he'd be a terrible spy. "Nothing of the sort. Best night's sleep I've had in a long time," which held more than a grain of truth. "In fact, I'll have you know, nothing—“

A splintered screech cut through the gray sky above them. The harsh sound prickled the hairs pin straight on Cullen’s nape. Beneath him, his mount lurched to a halt and began to tramp in skittish anxiety. Trilling of birds and ambient babble of other animal cut to an eerie silence. Cold sweat broke over Cullen’s brows, seeping from the ice pumping in his veins.

"Shit," Varric said, turning his gaze towards to empty sky. "That can't be—“

A swift silhouette soared past the narrow gap of the canopy, momentarily shrouding the contingent in its immense shadow. 

"Ah, fuck," Varric swore and closed his eyes, as if it were all just a mass hallucination.

“Ser Mara, hold the rear!” the Commander yelled, yet no acknowledge presented itself. Irritated, Cullen wheeled his horse to find a number of his troops staring up into the sky, mouths agape in anxious disbelief. Ser Mara had noticeably paled a few shades lighter than her normal tawny glow. “Ser Mara! Hold the rear!”

The woman who staunchly braved waves of vicious Red Templars merely nodded at Cullen in numb affirmation. 

“Where are you going, Curly?” Varric patted his battle nug on the head to soothe the creature.

“To the front,” the knight supplied without further explanation. 

Cullen spurred his Ferelden courser into a gallop, racing along the wagons to the head of the column. Unfulfilled physical longing and boring scenery had become the least of his worries now.

The crisp taste of electric fear crackled in the air. It tasted of hundreds of uneasy people and horses on the brink of absolute panic and impending catastrophe. Another guttural shriek tore the tenuous quiet asunder. The winged beast glided lower for another pass near the convoy’s front. Ser Cullen swallowed his own fear, letting the corrosion harden in the pit of his stomach as he cantered up to the Inquisitor’s company.

"Andraste's fiery arse, " Blackwall blasphemed, gaze lifted skyward. His swarthy brow slacked in disbelief before furrowing.

Cullen's keen eyes searched the choked tract of open sky etched between the winter-ravaged branches. The shadow skimmed over them once more, a frightful glimpse of a lithe neck, leathery wings, and a slender tail. 

Maker, it was a blasted dragon. The Commander last seen one at Adamant, and his only other brush being Haven. Yet this encounter came no less terrifying. Where were they to take shelter with a full retinue of troops and non-military personnel?

"Where?" Cullen asked aloud to himself without supplying context, struggling to tamp down the mad pounding of his heart and focus. 

The single word utterance prompted Blackwall’s gruff bafflement. “In the bloody sky! You have eyes, man. Oh fucking Fade, why's there a dragon circling us?" Blackwall had to shout the question at Nymeria over the swelling din of agitated mounts and humming lyrium. “The blighters usually keep to their lairs unless provoked.”

"Or to hunt," Inquisitor Trevelyan added, her voice eerily calm.

The Inquisitor's Free Marcher ranger whickered nervously, but the rider merely stared at the sky, cultivating a still center to the growing chaos erupting around them. Cullen’s own thoughts turned back to the detail at the convoy’s tail. Templars were trained to detain mages, put down demons, mayhaps fight a summoned dragonling at best. But to battle a full grown dragon exceeded any battle prowess of the Order’s training.

"Could it be Corypheus' pet?" Cullen suggested, plunging his hands into his own tranquil core, an internal reserve all Templar's possessed to mitigate calamity.

Nymeria shook her head. "No, the snout is sharper and the horns aren't curled in upon themselves. Appears we’ve discovered another high dragon. Frederic will be thrilled,” she said dryly.

“Swive the bloody draconologist!” Blackwall said, winding the reins of his Green Dales Feral tighter in his fist. "Options?"

"Cassandra?" The Inquisitor finally dropped her piercing stare from the sky and towards the Nevarran Seeker.

"This is strange behavior,” Cassandra said. "Dragons tend to avoid large groups of soldiers. Not so much fearing death but to avoid injury.”

“Perhaps it’s hungry?” Nymeria glowered, not thrilled about that prospect.

Cassandra’s brows creased almost imperceptibly. “Possible, but unlikely. Armor consumed in such large amounts wreaks havoc on the dragon’s digestion. So I doubt it is looking for a snack. Especially when gurn offer easier prey and better meat. No, something else has drawn it."

"It’s singing to it," Cole spoke, sounding far away despite being right behind Cullen. The lad’s ghastly Bog Unicorn was apparently the only mount unfazed by the dragon’s presence. “The lyrium is singing the ancient dark aria and the dragon is calling back."

“To the bloody Void..." Nymeria cursed.

Cullen watched helplessly as the dragon dared pass lower, nearly scraping the the treetops with its scabrous belly. Another salvo of cries and prayers rose behind him. “Last thing the realm needs is another dread worm augmented by red lyrium. What do you suggest, Seeker? This is a piss poor spot to stave off a dragon.”

Cassandra nodded in agreement. “We are locked in on either side by the forest. Retreat means eking enough time to unpack the red lyrium wain and flee into the woods, abandoning the horses and supply carts to the beast’s mercy."

Blast, this was Haven all over again. Cullen realized he was strategically out of his depth concerning military tactics. An advancing army or troop of mages rebels he could meet with stalwart capability, but the Commander knew little of slaying dragons. "I could have my soldiers form a shield wall and—“

“Make them easier targets." Cassandra broke in. "No, the dragon hunters of Neverra hunted in small, spread out packs for a reason. If the dragon sees you are huddled, then it will simply dive and eliminate the cluster in one foul swoop."

The other member’s of the Inquisitor’s party ambled up on their mounts.

"And here I was countin’ my cockles that I'd made meself the right amount of useless to avoid this whole dragon shite,” Sera groused, running her fingers over the fletching in her quiver. "But you killed like tens of these things, yeah?"

"Oh, we've taken down more than a few dragons, Buttercup" Varric said. He unslung Bianca from his shoulder and withdrew a few bolts from inside his coat. "But in open fields with generously convenient points of cover. And don’t tell anyone, but running around like our asses were on fire may be an integral part of our strategy. But I think the issues at large are senseless casualties and a potential red lyrium pumped dragon."

"Today is a glorious day!" Bull shouted and pounded his bare chest. His was the only smile flashing amid a steadily churning sea of mayhem. 

"Can we not leave Skyhold once without encountering an irate dragon?" Dorian commented, his staff charged, ready to unleash a protective spell. "If you’re so chuffed, Bull, you go fight the infernal beast." 

"Harding!" The Inquisitor shouted above the clattering armor and frightful prayers to Andraste and the Maker. "Harding! Is Scout Harding with us or out surveying?”

"Here!” The agile dwarf ran sure footed through the rank and file. "This must be the source of the half-eaten, rotted gurn carrion we found on the journey towards the shrine. Inquisitor, I’m sorry! I swear I didn’t—“

"Never mind that!" Nymeria clipped in. "Is there a clearing or gully or anywhere relatively open to lure the beast away from the main convoy?”

Harding’s eyes swiveled upwards as if reading a map in her head. “A few miles ahead, the path splits. The right fork runs further on towards Skyhold, but the left fork leads to a moor. A barren rocky tract seamed with swampy terrain.”

"Good,” Nymeria nodded to herself, the course already decided without seeking further advice. “I’ll take the red lyrium wain and make haste there, away from the main force and—.”

"The moor's footing is treacherous!” Harding now interrupted her. "We nearly lost a junior scout to quick mire. Those pits will swallow you whole before you even let out a cry for help, let alone dodge dragon breath."

The Commander didn’t like this plan at all. “Inquisitor, we’ll find another solution. There must be—“

An earsplitting roar tolled in Cullen’s head, grating as if the sound itself peeled his brain like an onion. His courser reared and would have bucked off a less adept rider. Somewhere above the knell in his ears, the audible bedlam of the convoy, and the humming of the red lyrium, a racket like rolling thunder drew upon them, drowning all other noise. Snapped branches, fortunately no thicker than kindling, rained down from the sky, loosed in the dragon’s grazing wake.

Lady Inquisitor Nymeria Trevelyan shook off the barrage of twigs and noise, her eyes fixed on the red lyrium wain. Then she regarded Cullen with an unflinching stare of conviction.

"We haven't much choice, Cullen,” Nymeria shouted over the ringing of his ears in a tone which brooked no argument. She swung her leg over the horses neck, dismounting with castle-trained finesse.

* * *

He awoke to the saccharine scent of perfume burning in his nostrils. Last night throbbed back. A dull headache riddled with cursory memories of too many drinks and silken skin sliding along satin sheets. Though the drinks were long gone, the cool satin clung to his skin, dried there by last nights avid exertion. A warm, pink body barely stirred beside him as he lifted his pounding head to take in his opulent surroundings. 

The boudoir lacked for nothing. Richly trimmed in the finest furnishing purchased from only the best shops. Or so he recalled one of the loquacious lasses babbling last night. So this is where he ended up after the festivities? He remembered leaving the Printemps Estate in a carriage. Salacious words whispered in his ear lurid enough to wrest him from the prime debauch of the season. When a busty Orlesian lass in a half-corset and thigh high boots asks to go somewhere for privacy, you’re either guaranteed a great night or your final night. Fortunately, she lead him to the carriage where he found another occupant of the scantily clad feminine persuasion already awaiting him. Eagerly awaiting, judging by how fast she’d freed his prick from his trousers. 

The other woman murmured beside him in her exhausted sleep, her gilded eye mask askew and looking none too comfortable. Lipstick smeared across the demure pout Orlesian women’s faces tended to rest in. She certainly looked a lot less innocent than the previous night. Her coquettish endearments punctuated with bites still stinging upon his thighs and stomach. Somehow he felt those sharpest among the tapestry of bodily soreness. Amid the aching in his shoulders and chafing of his lips. These two damn near wore him out.

Shit. What time was it? He had to muster at mid-morning. Certainly such a lavish room had a clock crafted by Orlais’ best clockmakers or whatever shite some bastard claimed. Judging by the light streaming in through the mullioned windows, he had a few hours yet. The day was new, full of the thrilling adventures only the mutable mistress Val Royeuax could offer. Lieutenant Thom Rainier chuckled to himself, smiling…until he noticed he was manacled to the carved wooden headboard. 

A panic seized him. 

Thank the Maker the chains left enough slack to maintain healthy circulation. He’d expect to lose his hand to a blade, not bound to a woman’s bed. The delicately forged chain clattered against the headboard as he vainly challenged the links with a tug. 

“Hey! Madame!” he nudged Sleeping Woman A with his knee.

She groaned something akin to a dying animal and shielded the sunlight from her eyes. “Comtesse.”

“Yes, erm, Comtesse. May you by chance know where the key is?” He shook his shackles impatiently.

The noble beauty slid off her mask to rub eyes puffy from sleep, further smudging her generously applied kohl. “Brigitte,” she groaned, half-muffled in the pillow. When Sleeping Woman B (Brigitte?) didn’t answer, the Comtesse reached over Rainier’s stomach and angrily shoved the woman. “Brigitte! Where is the key? We must unlock…” she stared at him and squinted, sifting through her hazy recollection. “Whoever this is before my husband comes looking for me.”

“Husband?!” Thom goggled at her. “You told me your husband was dead!”

“Well, yes. My first husband,” she replied smartly. “You should have specified, Monsieur…”

“Whoever,” he retorted testily and yanked harder at the manacles. “Madame…Brigitte. The key, madame! Do you happen to be married as well?”

“Baroness, not madame,” she corrected and stuck her prim little nose in the air. “And not married, but this is my Uncle’s house….who also happens to be Marsali’s husband.” She finished the explanation by nibbling on her bottom lip.

Rainier’s brows shot up to his peaked hairline and he volleyed his attention back on the Comtesse. “You’re her aunt?”

“By marriage, which she arranged to bring us closer.” The Comtesse defended herself. “Please, I’ve shared Brigitte’s bed longer than I have any man’s.”

“Aye, I could tell that from last night. Now, Baroness Brigitte, I’d rather not finish my promising young life at the end of a noose.”

Brigitte rolled her eyes, thinking him dramatic. “This is Val Royeaux. If they hung every man for making cuckolds, their wouldn’t be a single twine of rope left within Orlais.

“Of course, but due to extenuating circumstances, my superiors frown upon my dueling nobles to the death.” He let some heat into the words. “Now, if you could, the key, Baroness.”

She seemed more annoyed than fearful for her uncle’s life, but the threat worked. Once again, Comtesse Marsali shoved the other woman, this time hard enough to roll her out of the commodious bed. “Find the key, Brigitte! I scarcely remember why we even entertained such a loutish brute.”

Baroness Brigitte hit the floor with a tiny yelp, taking the satin sheets with her, stripping Rainier of his only covering. The Comtesse ’s eyes raked over his naked body, lingering on the sizable beast which roused every morning Rainier awoke, no matter how hungover or sated from the night before.

“Ah, now I remember.” She smiled wickedly and gave his manhood and appreciative caress. “Perhaps we have time for one more—“

A thumping at the boudoir’s door startled all three of them. “Marsali!” the stuffy, albeit furious voice yelled through the door. “Marsali! Brigitte! I know you are in there! Unlock the door this moment or I shall fetch the house guard to break it in!”

“Maker’s balls,” Rainier thumped the back of his head against the headboard. A flood of adrenaline dispelled the impediment of his hangover. “The fucking key! Now!” he shouted in a whisper.

“No need for that, dear heart!” Marsali called back in a poor imitation of grogginess before darting out of bed and gathering Rainier’s scattered clothing. Brigitte frantically opened the numerous trinket boxes and rummaged through the drawer of her vanity. 

_At this rate I’ll not even get to duel him,_ Rainier groused to himself. _He’ll most likely run me through as I’m trussed like a roast goose._

“Ah!” Brigitte exclaimed and shoved her hand down the front of her corset, plucking out the brass key from the secure depths of her cleavage. 

“Quickly now!” the shackled man implored.

“Marsali! Is there someone else in there?” the Comte’s voice hitched in suspicion.

“No, of course not! Just me and Brigitte,” she called, snatching the key from the Baroness and hastily unshackling one of Rainier’s hands. She growled in a low voice to the other woman. “Finish collecting his effects! He must be on his way!”

The girl did as bade, throwing the man’s clothes in a heap at the end of the bed. “But where will he escape?”

“How high up are we?” Rainier asked, snatching the key from Comtesse Marsali’s fumbling fingers and unfastened the last manacle. He lunged from the bed, tugging on his breeches as he went. 

“Third floor?” She narrowed her eyes. 

Rainier noticeably balked as he tugged on his boots, shaking his head and smirking as if this were hilarious. “Well, at least it’s not the fourth floor.” 

“Marsali!” the Comte blustered. “That is it! I am calling the guard!”

He buckled his sword belt loosely about his waist and peered out the lace curtain, noting the two sentries pacing about the gardens in relaxed formation, their masks gleaming in early morning light. His own mask clutched in his left hand. While he did not doubt he could cut through them, he’d rather not spill their blood for the sake of his own incorrigible cock. 

“Yes, call the guards to your side,” Rainier spoke in crude Marcher just loud enough that the Comte heard him. 

“Who is that?” the Comte cried. “Guards, fetch the ram! I don’t know who you are, you cocky lothario, but I’ll see you castrated for this!”

Rainier waved off both the Comte’s threats and the weak hits of the two women beating at his back. He fixated on the outside guard detail instead, releasing a sigh of relief the moment the guardsmen scurried into the house. He opened the mullioned window and swung one foot over the ledge. 

“And on that note, Comtesse, Baroness,” he said, affixing his mask upon his stubbled face. “I thank you for your company last evening.”

“Andraste’s sword, just leave already!” the Baroness yelled at him in her frustration. 

Lieutenant Rainier smirked beneath the mask, entirely for his own benefit, before scaling the trellis two stories to the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maker, this took too long to write. I have a tendency to work on later chapters when the non-porny, dialogue bits are blocked. Only to completely rehash those porny bits upon reaching the chapter. It never ends.


	6. Ashes and Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scandalmongers/Here be Dragons/Survivor Guilt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wish I could have just typed [insert dragon battle here] and had this posted last week.  
> The flashbacks are slathered with angst and survivor guilt concerning Adamant.

She'd been shut in her quarters for a few days now, wrapped in the grief of Hawke's death and bizarre ordeal of escaping the Fade. As always, Nymeria’s obstinate stoicism forbade her from showing such weakness in front of her loyal friends and advisors, regardless of Blackwall's insistence that they only meant to help. Yet she barred admittance to her chambers for all except him, and that grudging permission came only after he’d sat outside her door for an entire night.

"Bloody, stubborn Marchers," the man who spent his youth in Markham muttered. He descended the stairwell of the Inquisitor's tower bearing a tray laden with cold stew and hardened brown bread. At least she'd drunk the ale this time. 

Blackwall had no choice but to carry the untouched meal through the Great Hall, feeling every eye turn upon him like a one man fanfare. The full tray undoubtedly added fodder to another round of ludicrous rumors. Bloody parasites. May the Void take them. Three days hence the return from Adamant and he'd already heard whispers that the Inquisitor was insane, raving, disfigured, suicidal, possessed or any combination of those afflictions. 

The Warden brandished what little clout he garnered, urging Josephine to throw every ungrateful diplomat out of Skyhold, but apparently that's not how diplomacy worked or some nugshit like that. 

Lost in his simmering repulsion with shit-tongued diplomats, he halted as a sudden clamor broke over the usual susurrus of hushed voices and whispering finery. It sounded like a brief scuffle of boots grating flagstones followed by a pained yelp. 

"Say that again!" the familiar voice accustomed to bellowing orders on the battlefield swelled and echoed in the enormous space, tainting the haughty civility with tenuously bridled savagery.

Blackwall's gaze searched the crowded Great Hall for the disturbance. Eyes which had honed on him mere moments earlier now snapped upon the fresh commotion like hungry dogs chomping at raw meat. The source of their rapt attention emerged as a masked Orlesian dignitary shoved against a wall with Ser Cullen's fingers twisted in the man's finery. 

"Blast it! I heard you! Now say that again so everyone can hear it!" The tall knight's scarred face thrust within an inch of the pristine mask, snarling. "Or shall I launch a formal investigation into the source of these disreputable rumors and banish the snake from Skyhold, thus ruining his diplomatic career?"

The man’s tight gulp could be heard over the hushed crowd. "I-I may have suggested that the Inquisitor's absence is due to demonic possession. But I meant it only as pure conjecture, Ser! Please, I intended no harm!"

"Allow me to apologize for my short memory," Cullen primed his vitriolic words with a guttural growl. "But I don't recall you storming Adamant Fortress by our side. Perhaps that’s because I led the van. Tell me, were you leaping over the walls evading boiling pitch or did you hazard the constant rain of arrows? I'm curious."

"I wasn't there! Mercy, it was only speculation! Just a fanciful story!”

"A bloody slight of deformation more like it!" Everyone heard the subtle squeak of Cullen’s leather gloves clenching around the man's collar.”

"Commander," a silvery voice lilted in the same accent the dignitary spoke. "There is no need for such belligerent behavior!”

"Put him down, Commander," Josephine had joined Leliana outside her office door, slightly more perturbed at the scene than the Spy Master. "You will not manhandle any of my guests!”

"Guests?" Cullen laughed bitterly, but dropped the man all the same, letting him slide to ground at his feet. "Pardon my crude Fereldan ways, but does the guest custom of Antiva and Orlais encourage flagrant disrespect of the household’s host?"

Leliana sighed, her exasperation plain as she cocked her hip and folded her arms. Josephine cradled her portable secretary in the crook of her arm despite having just left her actual desk. Both women were quite a demure sight compared to the Commander’s temerity. Yet Blackwall would rather be on the receiving end of Ser Cullen’s bollocking than the steely women’s tongue lashing.

“Let us continue this discussion in the War Room, Commander,” Josephine bade. “And try not to threaten anymore my guests on the way there.”

"No. I'll not be scolded in the corner like some recalcitrant child.” The knight thrust his finger at them. “For days I've held my tongue while this ignoble parade of fool's gossip grows into an unwieldy monster. I want this indignity stopped this moment."

"And what shall we do, Commander?” Leliana asked incredulously. “Would you have us start ripping out tongues and nailing them to the door as warning?”

"I'd have you defend the woman who's given this Inquisition everything! Instead of permitting such slander to fester!” he shouted and more than a few spectators flinched. "Maker knows our obligations to the cause, but Lady Nymeria joined of her own volition. Yet these… _pissants_ would spew lies within her own walls as they drink her ale and eat her food.”

“Then she is more than welcome to come down and rectify the rumors herself,” Leliana suggested and Blackwall watched the Commander’s face turn as red as his surcoat in anger.

“Commander,” Blackwall spoke barely above his usual tone, yet every head in the hall swiveled to face the new participant. “Would you kindly walk with me to the kitchens?”

The knight released an audible breath through his nose, scowling at the gathering crowd before trudging to Blackwall’s side. 

"You were stationed in the Free Marches. Ever hear the old adage about Ostwick?" Blackwall asked, jostling the tray as messenger hared past them. With the dispute over, the Great Hall swarmed with activity once again. 

The perpetual crease in Cullen's brow blunted and a glint of humor sparked in those amber eyes. "That the only thing harder than Ostwick walls are Ostwick skulls."

"Aye," Blackwall nodded in affirmation. "And Lady Trevelyan is possibly the most hardheaded of them all. Though she attests her Lady mother holds that title,” he added with a shrug.

Midday hoisted the sun at its pinnacle above the craggy horizon of the Frostbacks. A wash of warmth and fresh air brushed Blackwall’s cheeks and he wished Nymeria were there to enjoy it. The two men crossed the yard, silent save for the clashing of blunted swords and the cheers of the children gathered around the training ring. The Commander paused to bellow a few strident words of advice to his troops, his demeanor still soured by the confrontation in the Great Hall.

"I know she must bide her time,” Cullen began as they passed under the stone archway. “But I only wish to give her the respite she deserves instead of this cesspool of gossip churning beneath her feet." Cullen clenched the hilt of his sword, his eyes tight with impotent fury. The Commander’s frustration wasn’t just about Nymeria, Blackwall inferred. A splinter of something past and personal barbed the knight’s side.

Unwilling to broach the intimate topic, Blackwall concentrated on the issue at hand. “Well, in a time where more wars are started with words, not everyone appreciates the brusque logic of smacking scandalmongers in the mouth. Men like us either scud the tides with tact or hope we don’t dash ourselves upon the shoals in a temper.” 

The knight scoffed. “I’d rather dash myself upon the shoals than kiss anymore arses.” 

“Aye. Given the foul shit spewing out theses blighter’s mouths, I’d be afraid of the filth coming out their backend,” Blackwall groused but surrendered a smile at the Commander’s easy laugh.

The closer they drew to scullery, the stronger the delectable aroma of dinner grew. An open door ushered them into the humid tempest that was Skyhold’s kitchen. Both men squeezed their way past flour-spattered bakers and maneuvered between toiling scullions. One of the bustling cooks paused to look at the intact, stale meal upon Blackwall’s tray.

She shook her head and _tsked_. “Maker, it’s been three days and she’d barely supped on anythin’ other than beef broth and ale. Unless Cabot’s been feedin’ her. Though I struggle to call whatever he serves _food_.” 

“I’ll be back at breakfast on the morrow. Perhaps some pastries? Have we blackberries and clotted cream? Lady Trevelyan once mentioned that as a favored treat in Ostwick,” Blackwall inquired.

The cook nodded somberly before returning her attention to the jumble of herbs spread before her.

With all the savory scents wafting through the air, Blackwall’s own stomach grumbled in empty irritation. But his thoughts returned to the woman sitting in the Inquisitor’s tower and the abject helplessness which consumed him. He put the kitchen at his back, walking some distance to the well before he realized Ser Cullen still shadowed him. 

“Give me an enemy of the body over an enemy of the mind any day,” the knight spoke, his eyes fixed on the Inquisitor’s tower above. Again, the words touched warmer to the grievance, exhibiting an inmate delicacy possessed only by experience.

“Perhaps you should have a chat with Nym?” Blackwall suggested. “Maker knows I’ve tried myself, but mayhaps she’d appreciate another perspective. You knew Hawke, after all.”

The younger man stood and stared past the Warden. Blackwall saw the inner-conflict turning over in Cullen’s mind. “Alright,” the knight acquiesced. “But I cannot guarantee I’ll be of much help. Or if she’d even be willing to talk to me.”

Blackwall clapped his hand on the knight’s pauldron. “At least you’ll try. And that’s all I could ask of you. Either way, I’m sure my lady will appreciate your efforts once she emerges from this bloody funk.”

“I’ll go to her tonight. After the vermin have scattered from the Great Hall, lest I end causing another scene” Cullen said, rubbing the back of his neck and perhaps feeling a little foolish for losing his temper. “I’ve work to attend too anyway. Mountain ranges of it. Sometimes I swear this place is girded by sheaves of paper instead of blocks of stone.” 

"Aye, I'm off to work myself,” Blackwall sympathized with a knowing smirk. “Leliana prepared the intel of Adamant for me. As if there's something I missed whilst storming the ramparts and flouncing through the Fade. No rest for the wicked, eh?”

* * *

An acrid yet pervasively cloying odor supplanted the crisp woodland air. The stench could only mean they were getting closer. Cassandra held the reins of the deaf destriers, clenching her jaw in determined concentration as there was no point in yelling at the beasts to go faster. Behind them, Blackwall and Solas hung off back of the wain, peering overhead as the dragon screeched in annoyance. 

A few miles ride brought them to a strath of windswept desolation cleaved into the forested terrain like a rotting wound. The land stretched flat save for a few prodigious tors towering in the distance. Craggy slabs of slate jutted from a sea of black marsh which Nymeria assumed to be the quickmire. The only splash of color against the bleak landscape belonged to stubborn thistles sprouting through the inhospitable turf. 

Their route abruptly dropped off into a steep declination of crumbled slate. It may not have been a straight drop, but driving the horses down the hazardous slope promised disaster for all involved. 

"We can not bring the horses down to the moor!” Cassandra shouted over the bluster of headwind buffeting across the flatland. "Either they will lose footing or be crushed beneath the wagon's weight." 

"Detach them then! But the cart is the only lure we have at our disposal!” Nymeria responded over the howling gusts whipping at her hair. "Back up the cart to the edge and push it over. Whatever we do, we must make haste!”

Due to Blackwall's time spent assisting Master Dennet with Skyhold’s four-legged troops, the horses were unharnessed in what must have been record time. As they lacked hobbles, Nymeria's only option was to let the destriers roam. No sooner had they shoved the wain down the decline did the dragon skate across the canopy behind them, frightening the jittery mounts into fleeing whence they came.

"Marvelous," Blackwall scowled beneath his griffon helm. "Our luck is enviable. Looks like we'll be walking back."

"I'll envy our luck so long as all of us _can_ walk back after this," Nymeria said, her gaze fixed on the wain as it jerked and careened down the slope without capsizing. "Come on, best be after it before the dragon alights."

Her boots sunk ankle deep into the loose gravel. Rogue’s grace fled her, sending Nymeria half-sliding, half-stumbling down the steep descent. Blackwall faired worse as he tumbled in her wake, rolling several times before recovering to his unsteady feet. Ultimately, the bulky, plate clad warrior ended up sliding down the last several yards on his arse. Hocking a globule of gritty spittle, Blackwall stewed in humility until Nymeria hoisted him to his feet. 

"If I start shitting stones, we’re mounting this dragon's fucking skull in the Grand Hall,” he threatened, brushing gravel from the frayed seat of his breeches.

Cassandra and Solas’ resourcefulness proved canny. Both mounted Cassandra’s shield and slid down using Solas’ staff to steer themselves.

"Maker's balls, why didn't we think of that?" Blackwall said and hefted his shield from his back.

"This is a place of despair," Solas said, his face an emotionless mask as he surveyed the bluff in grim recollection. "I have traveled here before in the Fade. Before time forgot, this land was once called _Sarcheva’n Flein Aen_ , or the Graves of the Lesser Gods. The ancient peoples of this region once performed seasonal sacrifices by throwing a child, a mother, and a crone into the quickmire pits. All killed to appease gods which were no more than superstitious myth.” The elf shook his head at the fruitless dedication of others deaths.

"Quaint," Cassandra commented and adjusted her helm. "But now that we are down here, what is our strategy? There is no cover and the quickmire pits are too wide to leap from one platform to another. We cannot simultaneously protect the wain and fend off the dragon.”

The Inquisitor noticed just how far away sheer momentum propelled the wain. The cart had rolled near the edge of the broad slate flat they stood upon, its wheels stopping several feet from the black moat. 

"Which is why we're going to push the wain into the mire," Nymeria informed without so much as a look of confirmation before sprinting towards the wain.

By the time she and her party closed the distance, the dragon circled them, somewhat incensed by the perilous terrain. Perhaps it knew the danger of the mire as much as they did? The sinuous beast’s scales shimmered greenish black like an airborne eel out of water. With a deafening roar, it landed between the four combatants and their only escape route back up the gravel incline. 

"Heave!" Nymeria cried, the first to attempt pushing the wain towards the edge. Her muscles griped at the futility of the endeavor. Maybe if she was a seven foot tall Qunari she could budge the Maker-denied thing, but her human rogue's strength suited to cunning and stealth over brute force. The cart lurched forward a few inches when Blackwall joined the effort, and another foot once Cassandra put her formidable strength behind the push. Yet still, the cart crawled at a snail’s pace with several more feet to go. All this as a disgruntled dragon prowled closer. 

"Here!" Solas leaped on the back and pointed his staff at the ground. "Everyone back away! All of you! Now!"

Of course backing away from the cart meant walking towards the dragon.

"What are you doing?” Cassandra asked, stealing a nervous glance over her shoulder. “You can't possibly move that by yourself.”

"Back away and distract the dragon,” Solas advised. “You must trust me!"

A flare of fire erupted from Solas's staff, licking at their feet. The cart lurched forward and farther than their previous efforts combined.

"Right.” Blackwall understood “Now we just have to distract a bloody dragon. Anyone got any puppets or know some good jokes?” 

“Guess I’ll show it my magic trick,” the Inquisitor offered.

Nymeria thrust the flat of her palm towards the dragon, tearing down several mental barriers and chains until she felt the discomforting vibration unravel in her palm. Regardless of its value in fighting Coryepheus, she hated calling the Anchor. Closing the Fade rifts had been painful enough, but opening them siphoned her vitality like a ravenous leech. The vibration flourished to an agitated throbbing. Whirls of black and green miasma spiraled beneath the bewildered dragon. The Fade rift surged, sucked, restraining the panicked fiend in place as Solas' ingenuity propelled the cart closer the mire. 

Yet her Fade rifts only lasted so long. The vibration shifted to searing pins and needles as the lucent fissure retreated back into the locus of the Anchor. Nymeria shook off the queer sensation, flexing her fingers. The hand was simply a hand once more.

"Got it!" Solas yelled, leaping off the back of the wain as the mire swallowed the cart inch by inch. By the time the newly freed dragon noticed what they had done, the back half of the cart stuck straight in the air, its precious cargo dumped and swallowed. The persistent hum of the red lyrium cut to quiet.

"One problem down," Nymeria hissed through her teeth, drawing her daggers with a flourish of spinning blades. "Now to finish it."

As always, the fighting a dragon was a grueling affair only exacerbated by the hazardous terrain. Too many times Nymeria found herself skidding near the edge of the slate platform, no more than a careless stumble from being swallowed whole. Cassandra and Blackwall rallied, levying the heaviest toll on the creature's health. Three times the dragon escaped into the sky, and three times Cassandra brought creature crashing down with her grapple.

Resigning itself to grounded combat, the dragon let out a piercing bellow and flapped its wings. A gyre of carnage pulled them closer with the each strong flutter of leathery wings. The very air working against them, sucking them within the dragon’s reach and over the precarious footing. Blackwall ended up aligned with the dragon’s head, a place no one wanted to be with the increased odds of death by either fire, teeth or horn. Scorched earth flew in Nymeria’s eyes, yet she held them open despite the stinging pain, unable to take her attention off her jeopardized paramour. 

Another primal shriek stunned Blackwall. The malicious beast canted its head in triumph as its scaly chest blazed like a furnace. In a few harrowing seconds, Nymeria was about to witness her lover roast in his armor in a torrent of dragon’s fire. Her throat constricted around her pounding heart, the world condensing to the lethal distance between Blackwall and the snarling dragon’s maw readying to cook him alive. So the Inquisitor did what she always did in these forlorn situations. She stopped thinking and allowed her body to react no matter what the price. 

This one cost her prized, enchanted dragon slaying dagger, yet she paid it willingly, and would do so again if it meant saving Blackwall’s life. She’d barely registered throwing the dagger before it spun tip-over-pommel and landed true in the dragon’s left eye. Embers burning through the scales in its gullet fizzled with the creature’s keen of anguish. The lithe head thrashed about, vainly trying to dislodge the blade piercing its eye. 

“Eat that you fucking bastard,” Nymeria growled and sprinted towards Blackwall, tackling him out of the way. His helmeted head caromed off the slate and she knew that hadn’t felt pleasurable.

“Woman, what was that for! My bloody head sounds like the Val Royeaux chantry at noontime!” He yanked his helm off to shake the ringing from his ears.

“It nearly roasted you like a Feast Day goose!” she growled and punched him in the shoulder which lacked a pauldron. “And my favorite dagger is now lodged in its eye. A little bloody gratitude might be nice.”

“Aye, I’ll give ye all the gratitude my tongue and prick can afford,” he said, though the smirk carried in his voice alone. He seemed more absorbed by the dragon’s trampling and raging for charming innuendo. “Whatever you did pissed it right off, love.”

Despite the agile neck and dextrous claws, the dragon proved incapable of pulling out the dagger on its own. Furious, the beast honed its remaining eye on where Nymeria and Blackwall huddled.

With a thunderous roar, the dragon bounded towards them, riled in maimed blood rage. The rogue and the warrior clambered to the unsteady feet, barely dodging the beast as it charged past. Momentum and the tight field of engagement finally worked to the party’s favor. The dragon’s bulky mass and clumsy gait sent the creature fishtailing hind legs and tail into the marsh. No matter how hard the creature beat its wings, the quickmire relentlessly ensnared the dragon, sucking the enormous body down to abysmal depths. An ear splitting scream choked off the moment the snout slipped beneath the tarry surface. Only bubbles remained, bursting as a last breath escaped. 

Nymeria’s heart slammed against her sternum as she rolled on her back, relenting to exhaustion. Despite the battle's close, she gripped Blackwall’s vambrace, afraid to let go until she collapsed atop his stout frame with a clatter of armor.

"So, wish you'd stayed in that cabin in the Hinterlands yet?" she panted, her head rising and falling with each of his gasping breaths. She peered across the battleground and saw Solas healing Cassandra’s scrapes with a soothing green aura.

"You wouldn't know what to do without me, love.” Blackwall wiped the sweat from his brow, grinning and shifting to assuage his cramping back. 

Distantly, a sizzling sound snapped them from their torpor. Nymeria lifted her head just in time see a thin sliver of smoke curling whence the dragon submerged. Before she could loose even a word of warning, the marsh erupted in flame. Blackwall rolled them, curling himself around Nymeria to shield her from any backdraft threatening to sweep over the ledge.

"Shit!" Blackwall cursed against her helm. “Will this fucking dragon not die?”

Said dragon clawed from the blazing mire, keeling forward in ungainly steps encumbered by the viscous tar clinging to its scales. Licks of flame ignited the black sludge and the dragon roared in searing pain. Apparently resistance to fire wasn’t synonymous with immunity to the element. Smelling of burnt flesh, the dragon bound over the rocks, its swaying tail nearly barreling into Blackwall and Nymeria where they laid entwined. With a great leap, the dragon took flight, showering flaming globs of tar from the sky as it ascended. 

"Think it’s going back to its lair?" Blackwall said with a glimmer of hollow hope.

"If I had just lost an eye, drowned, and was lit on fire, I'd be pissed enough to want revenge." Nymeria rose to her feet, wearing the taxing ache of such movement with a grimace. "Come on, we need to run back. Something isn't right."

****

He'd heard the fight. The dragon's keening each time someone landed a hit. Saw the occasional puff of smoke rise over the skeletal canopy. 

Then silence. 

Maker's breath, where were the runners with status reports? The front sounded eerily calm yet, but where were the blasted reports?

Cullen pendulated between the same two trees for almost an hour, pacing the breadth of the dirt road until he wore a rut in the surface. He should have gone with them. 

And done what? Make a worthy moving target? In the troop’s idleness, the Commander busied himself rearranging the convoy’s configuration, bringing up half his knights to guard the front. Not much guarding to be done as they milled about, most gazes fastened on their Commander as he restlessly paced like a caged lion.

Finally, hoofbeats of approaching horses halted his track. The elated relief dispelled the ponderous dread plaguing him since she sped off. He’d be certain to advise her to never to do that again, all the while biting back a smile. The Inquisitor’s daring saved the day. But as the horses galloped closer, Cullen noticed they returned without riders. Icy hands entangled in his guts and twisted.

"Lieutenant!" Ser Cullen called, his gaze sliding over the ranks of knights. “Ser Mara!”

"Commander, Ser!"

"Dispatch our swiftest riders to the moor and—“

A great sucking sound cracked in the distance, followed by an inky plume of black smoke pouring into the grey sky. Cullen's heart shot into his throat at all the tragic ramifications of such a cataclysm. _No…_

"Sweet Andraste, turn your light upon us," the Ser Mara spoke in a tremulous voice. 

“Ser Mara!” Cullen barked and the knight tore her attention from the doom cloud. “Dispatch riders to the moor. The Inquisitor and her party will require mounts,” he ordered though the words were vacant of optimism.

The level tone of his voice sounded strange even to himself, but Ser Mara obeyed. Four riders galloped towards the rising shroud of pitch smoke unfurling across the horizon. Cold sweat beaded on Cullen's brow. He wanted to go to her. To mount his coarser and charge toward the smoke. But his duty to the Inquisition held him here. 

As if the scenario couldn’t get worse, a flaming creature burst from the smoke. The blasted dragon lived. Years of battle instinct told him to prepare for the worst. Told him the dragon was coming back for them.

"Mages!" Cullen roared and Dorian and Lady Vivienne appeared as the ranks split apart for them. “It appears the dragon shall grace us with its presence once more. I want barriers up and offensive spells cast only if you’re certain they’ll land true.”

“Don’t worry, Commander,” Dorian said in a brittle impersonation of his typical swagger. “I never miss.”

“Except with the outfit, darling,” Vivienne chided, though her frazzled nerves ran closer to the surface of her haughty disposition. 

The Commander turned his attention towards the shambled column of soldiers. “Archers, aim for the eyes and the underbelly. Knights, you are to focus your effort on shielding the mages and archers while the dragon is aloft. If it lands, maintain your distance and fall back if you must! Only rush the beast if it falls unconscious or otherwise indisposed.” The soldiers hallooed anxious affirmations as Ser Cullen slammed his lion helm on his head and retrieved his Inquisition shield. His own nerves buzzed beneath his skin, but he found reacting preferable to the torment of waiting and doing nothing. 

"Iron Bull, what are your thoughts on leading the van?" Cullen suggested as the enormous Qunari hefted his double-handed axe.

“Is it one of your holidays?” Bull beamed. “I like you already, Boss Man. Boss Lady usually hoards all the action to herself.”

“”Right,” Cullen responded and tamped down his anxiety. “Well, I must confess I’ve not faced a dragon in such intimate circumstances. Advice?"

The Qunari rested the axe on his shoulder and ticked three thick fingers. “Don't get your ass lit on fire; avoid the bitey end; and a single blow from a dragon’s tail will snap your spine before you even feel the hit. Good luck, Boss Man."

“Enlightening,” came as Ser Cullen’s only response. “Archers! Nock!”

Ranks of troops held their lines. All eyes snapped on the dark, smoking beast as it touched down in the road before them. Cullen scrunched his nose up at the pungent odor of burnt flesh and tar. Several patches of scale seared away, exposing the charred knurls of cauterized wounds beneath. What in the Fade did Nymeria do? A keening ripped through the air, the dragon's blood-curdling fury now evident from the familiar dagger jutting from its left eye. Beating wings kicked up a sirocco of stinging dirt which Cullen blocked with his shield.

Brandishing his gleaming blade, Ser Cullen chanted Trials 1:10. Bravery girded the soldiers behind him, but he knew the virulent poison of fear to wither the most tenacious hearts. “Maker, though the darkness comes upon me, I shall embrace the light! I shall weather the storm. I shall endure! What you have created, no one can tear asunder!” he shouted for his own fortitude as much as his soldiers.

The dragon merely glared at his benediction with a baleful eye. All it took was a single step towards the armed force before all out mayhem broke. “Archers! Release!”

Arrows rained upon the beast. It shielded itself with a leathery wing, screaming as the arrows pierced through the roasted webbing. 

“Fire freely!” Ser Cullen shouted. While arrows did little better than clatter agianst the dense hide, the projectiles offered as an advantageous distraction for a flanking maneuver. "Soldiers! To the woods for cover! We need to get behind it!" 

The groaning scream of falling trees creaked in a clamor, forcing Cullen to serpentine through the thick trunks or be crushed. Tangled undergrowth hitched on his armor, sometimes choking him as he dodged a falling bough. Because that would have been a spectacular end. Commander Cullen Stanton Rutherford, Knight-Captain of the Kirkwall Templar keep, sole Templar survivor of Kinloch Hold, felled by a felled tree. Poetic really.

The knight stumbled from the treeline in a flailing of metal, staring down the dragon’s ridged back and sinewy tail. Other knights also emerging from the dense wood, their shield and swords snagging in the bramble between the the trees. The thick foliage forced Cullen himself to wrest his helmet from a particularly obstinate vine.

"Glad you could join us, Boss Man!" Bull shouted merrily while hacking at the beast’s hindquarters. "One ornery bastard!" The Qunari artfully dodged the dragon’s tail and swung his two-handed axe. The large blade barely sliced into the rockhard scale.

"Blast," Cullen stared at his own sword, gripped by the futility of the situation. But he had to try. 

The last time he faced one of these beasts, his only viable option was to bury Haven in an avalanche, taking himself and all with him. He'd give his shield arm for a calibrated trebuchet right now. The advances of the armored knights reduced to a feeble charge and retreat to avoid the dragon’s wayward tail. Few managed to maneuver the through the woods and slash at the creature’s side. A stealthily cloaked figure jumped about the dragon’s back, revealing Cole in quicksilver flashes before blood spurted from dagger wounds.

In the midst of bedlam, the Commander’s ears pricked up at fast approaching hooves. The scouts were back and that nearly frightened him more than this blasted dragon. If they were back this quickly, then they must bear dark news.

“Cullen!” the last voice he expected shouted for him. Ser Cullen spun on his boot heels, meeting Lady Nymeria’s jubilant gaze as she dismounted her horse. The rest of the company reigned up behind their Inquisitor. “We aren’t too late then?”

“Nymeria.” The name melted on his tongue, tasting of sweet relief amid the smell of blood and battle. Maker preserve her, she was alive and his heart ached for her. In the brevity of a few seconds, the knight scolded himself. Not just for how he acted that morning, but the previous months. All that time squandered with his perceived inferiority and grudging uncertainty.

“Sorry, I may have commandeered some horses from your scouts,” she grinned, her face splotched with soot yet still the most beautiful thing Cullen had ever seen.

“So glad you could grace us with your presence, Inquisitor,” he smiled at her through the lion’s mouth, utterly astounded by this woman’s mettle. 

Rejuvenated dauntlessness washed away his fatigue. This Inquisitor’s mere presence strengthened like another layer of armor. Cullen charged into the battle by her side, her fleet footed steps outpacing his own. Within moments, Nymeria’s dagger plunged into a vulnerable artery running along the dragon’s hind legs. A steaming fountain of blood gushed from the wound, weakening the beast’s leg beneath its considerable weight. Panicked, it flailed, uprooting trees and forcing most of the soldiers back into the woods to evade the whipping tail. Even Iron Bull leapt to cover. 

Although she’d evaded the first harried swipes, one ill-timed leap alone sent Nymeria tumbling. The erratic tail clipped her leg, knocking her into a floundering heap, unable to stand regardless of how many times she fumbled to do so. Injured, the Inquisitor lamely pushed herself onto hands and knees, only to come face-to-face with the dragon’s marred eyes. The beast ignored the arrows and sword slashes. Why bother with such trite projectiles when it stared down the woman who put a dagger in its eye? The prospect of revenge muted the threats around it. 

A beacon of hope shined as the Inquisitor raised her palm, assuredly to call fourth a rift from the Anchor. Whether she had been drained or lacked the concentration to surpass the pain, the miasma refused to manifest. Nymeria pounded her fist on the ground and screamed a curse.

“Nym!” Blackwall, noticeably more pale, shouted. He hoisted his shield in the air. “Catch!”

He hurled the round shield like a discus. Fighting past her injury, Lady Trevelyan demonstrated keen agility by snatching the shield out of the air with both hands. Yet no matter how small she curled up, the aegis exposed vital parts of her body. 

“It’s not going to be enough,” Cullen said to himself, his cheeks numb and cold despite his battle fervor. The knight froze, joints knotted in panic, transfixed by the horror of snapping jaws diving for the Inquisitor.

Snapping from his stupor, the Commander mustered the little adrenaline left to him. He ditched his own shield and rushed the dragon, hidden in the ample blind spot of the maimed left eye. Razor teeth seized Blackwall’s shield and gnashing the disc into a mess of metal. Yet before the creature spat out the crumpled debris, Cullen’s blade sliced the leathery hide between the dragon’s jaw and neck, showering the brazen knight in steaming blood. Agonized, shrill shrieks of pain gurgled. The dragon’s horned head swayed obscenely on the slender neck, a gruesome trick of punctured arteries but intact spine. After a few clumsy convulsions, the beast lurched sideways and toppled.

Bedlam died with the slain beast. Soldiers ambled from the woods to join the silent gathering. Everyone goggled, and who could blame them? Most had only heard of dragons in tales or seen them at a distance, Cullen wagered. He lifted the lion helm off his head and inhaled fresh air, the world no longer stifled by walls of metal. Sweaty locks pasted to his forehead. His gloved fingers came back sticky after wiping his sopping hair in place. Dragon’s blood spattered every inch of him, smelling of tangy smoked copper.

“Ser Briggs!” The Commander yelled, unable to pry his eyes from the immense corpse. The rangy young knight edged towards his superior. He wondered whether the aide kept his distance because of the expanding pool of blood or the intimidating sight of Cullen soaked in gore. “Briggs, take our troops and check on the convoy. I want a list of the injured, and Maker forbid, the dead if there are any.” 

Though the young knight nodded in affirmation, his sabatons planted in place as if he’d sprung roots, gawking at the dragon.

“It isn’t going anywhere, Briggs,” Cullen advised, a little harsher than he intended. “But we have injured soldiers in need of treatment. Go! All of you! Quit tarrying and go back to the convoy!” And with that, the young man and the dumbfounded assortment of knights scampered off into the woods.

“I need someone to heal me,” the Inquisitor finally spoke in a brittle reserve. A few words and spells from Solas’s lips and Nymeria climbed back on her feet. 

“Cullen.” She looked at him with something inscrutable burning behind her eyes. “How did you know to do that?”

He blew the breath he held through pursed lips, concentrating on his slowing heartbeat. “Because one of the weaknesses in a knight’s armor is between the helm and breast plate,” Ser Cullen explained. “Gorget’s hinder articulation, and even then a well placed blade can slip through the gap. So, I assumed even the natural armor of a dragon had such a vulnerability in the same spot.” Even the Commander recognized the grasping fragility of his premise, but he had to do something. 

“You _assumed_?” Nymeria growled, stomped up and shoved hard on his chest plate. “Did you just charge a fucking dragon on a hunch?! It could have tore you in half at that close of a range! Or gored you with its horns!”

“But it didn’t,” Cullen snarled back. Both of them stood toe-to-toe, doused in dragon’s blood and soot, tired and agitated despite the victory. “I saw a chance and I took it.”

“Foolishly!” she yelled, her words hotter than dragon fire. She slammed her palms on the front of his cuirass again. 

“Only about as foolish as running off with a small team in the first place! As if you can’t go anywhere with more than four people!” He gestured to the nine faces of companions, all bemused as the Inquisitor and her Commander argued in front of the grisly carrion. 

Nymeria’s red eyes bore through a soft sheen of tears. _From the smoke,_ Cullen told himself. An errant tear tracked through the soot dusting her flushed cheek. She dashed it away with the back if her hand, smearing ash across the bridge of her nose. Hawke’s image conjured unbidden before he tamped it away. Maker, he nearly wished for another dragon to escape this mangled conversation.

"Are you really in such a fucking hurry to die?" She didn't hit him this time, yet her gimlet glare struck harder than any of her previous blows. 

He let the silence ripen before answering her. "No, Inquisitor. But if it meant saving your life, I'd give mine gladly."

Nymeria scoffed and shook her head, disregarding his earnest admission. "That's it. Seeing as there's a huge, swiving corpse blocking the road, we’re making a camp near here.”

“Where?” Cullen asked in cold duty. 

“In the swiving woods for all I care,” the Inquisitor grumbled. “Carve the useful bits off the beast and check the stomach for anything valuable. I'm going searching for its lair to ensure we'll have no more surprises this evening."

And with that gruff instruction, Nymeria yanked her dagger from the dragon’s butchered eye socket and stormed off in search of Harding, leaving a small collective of puzzled faces to stare in her wake. Only Cullen’s frown branded her back, too angry to succumb to his confusion. The blasted nerve of her! At least she refrained from chewing him out in front of their knights, but Lady Trevelyan breached decorum by speaking in such a way.

In spite of Cullen’s obvious discontent, the Qunari mercenary approached and clapped him hard on the back. “Come on, Boss Man! Perhaps Boss Lady’s just miffed you stole her thunder! We have another dragon slayer on our team! You are truly a _Basalit-an._

Whatever that meant. Cullen didn’t bother to ask for a translation.

* * *

It took a few knocks before she even acknowledged him.

Her voice muffled through the wood, but nothing could dampen the bitter edge of her tone. “Unless we have enemies battering our gates, I’m not taking visitors.” 

“Inquisitor, it’s only me. May I come in?”

“No.”

Cullen raised his eyebrows at the curt answer. “What if I say _please_?”

He thought he heard a snort of a laugh come from the other side of the bolted door. “You don’t have food, do you? Did Blackwall send you here to sit on my chest and shove food down my throat?”

“I assure you, I’m not here by any ploy.” He leaned his forehead against the stolid wood. “And I like to believe I’m smarter than to force you to do anything, lest I end up on the pointy end of your daggers.” 

A few seconds later, he heard the scuffing of the crossbar sliding away and the click of the lock mechanism. Swallowing whatever tatters of unease lingered, Cullen gently pushed open the door and ascended the steps. She’d already retaken her seat on the bed, presenting him with her back and staring out the balcony window. 

The terrace doors opened to the all encompassing darkness of the Frostbacks. Even the moon dared not tread into the Inquisitor’s bower this night. The roaring hearth fire threw the only light and heat into her airy quarters. Regardless of the hearth’s vibrance, the darkness thrived in the corners. Disoriented by the gloom, Cullen nearly sat upon a clutter of books and papers strewn on her settee. Somehow taking a seat at her desk seemed wrong. So the knight sat with his back to her on the other side of the bed, placing a buffer of disheveled sheets between them. The two sat in silence for a long time, listening the fire crackle and the wind whistle.

“You made a mistake,” Lady Trevelyan’s voice caught, raw from days of crying. “I should never have been made Inquisitor. Even with the Anchor in my hand, Cassandra ought to have kept searching for Hawke. She was more qualified to lead. She had the charisma, the fathomless confidence, the innate ability to make the tough decisions. And what did I do when she finally came to help? I left her to die in the Fade.”

“Just because Hawke made tough decisions, doesn’t necessarily mean she made the right ones,” Cullen told her. “That woman was a thorn in my side half the time, kindling as much trouble as she snuffed out. But Hawke wasn’t at the Conclave, Hawke wasn’t chosen as the Herald of Andraste.”

Nymeria cackled, bitter and derisive. “You still believe that drivel? It wasn’t Andraste who chose me. It was a stupid slip of fate. Just dumb luck, or my unfortunate ability to blunder into terrible situations and somehow survive through the sacrifice of others.”

“And how do you know this?” the knight challenged without looking over his shoulder.

“Read the bloody reports, Cullen,” she sniped. “Wasn’t only Hawke, but also the Divine. Twice now I escaped the Fade through the bloodshed of others and people would worship me for it.” 

He had read the reports and Blackwall’s account seemed the most succinct compared to Bull’s fanciful posturing with Qun beliefs and Cole’s ramble of nonsense. “So just because the visage of Andraste didn’t appear to you and expressly task you as Herald, it means it was all just a trick of fate?”

“Yes,” she responded without a lick of hesitation.

“Ever consider that those people gave their lives because they saw the potential in you? A potential invisible to your own eyes because the world’s crashing down around you while you frantically catch the pieces?”

Lady Trevelyan didn’t deign to honor that notion with a response. Ostwick obstinance withstanding, Ser Cullen reached into his soul, knowing he must dredge up truths which would scrape his tongue on the way out of his mouth. 

“You’d think the worse thing about surviving is the trauma endured. The torture, the nightmares, the terrible things you witnessed,” he said, schooling the agony from his voice. “But no one ever thinks it’s the survival itself.”

She fidgeted in place on the bed.

“Those things I told you about Kinloch Hold. I hated myself for a long time after that,” he confided. “Men and women from noble houses with promising careers ahead and behind them fell and _I_ survived. A peasant boy from Honnleath who’d listened to too many knight’s tales. In my misplaced anger, I blamed the mages. To deflect my own self-loathing because I convinced myself that I deserved to die.

“There was an insidious rumor that I’d snapped and killed a few of my charges. Words on the wind, but the wind blew those words all the way to Kirkwall. With all eyes locked upon me, I hid my weakness, my nightmares. Ignored the suffering gnawing at my innards every waking morning. Inured spite fueled me for years at the Gallows.” He shook his head at the compliant coldness of his younger self. “But then I bore true witness to what happens when you deflect the pain and perceived weakness of self onto others. Now Meredith’s a monster of legend, and I’m left to rectify her mistakes because my own cheap stoicism prevented me from stopping her.”

Lady Trevelyan sniffled and Cullen dared to turn, facing her quivering shoulders. 

“Inquisitor, you’re here because Hawke wanted you here. She never wanted tears, only laughter and drinks, joking and songs. The Divine did not help you escape twice from the Fade so that you’d wrack yourself in guilt. If both willingly sacrificed themselves for you, then they recognized the incredible importance your life means to the survival of the realm.” 

“Does it ever get easier?” Nymeria asked, her voice hoarse from inactivity. “Does the weight of those lives lost ever lift?”

“Wish I could say _yes_ ,” he admitted. “But somedays the burden is lighter than others, somedays it’s heavier, crushing. But you’ll use that weight to ground yourself. Build a foundation to remember why you must push on beyond hardship.”

She let out staggered chuckle amid a snivel “Leave it to my trusted tactical advisor and his refusal to honey coat words I’d like to hear.” 

“You keep a jester for that. And Dutchess Florianne is most wroth anytime I’ve spoken to her,” he quipped, wishing he had it in him to lie. To give her false peace of mind. “For what it’s worth, I’ll be with you every trudging step of the way. Even if it leads me to the end.”

She swiftly spun around, the bedsheets rustled as she faced him. Red, puffy eyes blazed with deadly ferocity. “If you die on me, Cullen, I swear I’ll cross into the Fade and drag you back myself.” Both froze, staring at one another and blinking at her brash proclamation. Lady Trevelyan took a measured breath and composed herself, her fervent threat receded beneath jocular formality. “Really, I’ve been there enough times already. I suppose I could connive my way back should the need arise.”

Whatever Cullen was about to say clipped by the defiant grumble of her stomach. Clearly more annoyed than mortified, the Inquisitor pressed her hand to her unruly belly and sighed. “Seems my hunger has returned to me with a vengeance. Erm, any chance the kitchen’s are still open?”

That earned a chuckle from her Commander. “You could order them opened, if you so desired.”

She waved her hand and dismissed the notion. “Cabot’s it is. Care to share a drink with me, Commander?” 

Cullen nodded, ignoring his suddenly dry throat and the infernal flutter of his heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh. So between snow days and other IRL obligations, I clawed my way through this chapter kicking and screaming. And all I got was this monstrosity! Still not happy with the prose, but I need to move on. This chapter originally ran longer and ended with some smut. Welp, obviously the smut shifted to next installment. Whoops. But Maker, there's so many sexy times after this. Let's just say Nym's going to be more than a little saddle sore!


	7. Dirty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A first joining.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bet you thought you saw the last of me? But really, eff these snowstorms that cancel my childcare. Of course, that incomplete Blackwall one-shot I was working on could also be blamed for the delay. Anyway! Have some Cullen smut!
> 
> And no, you're not crazy. I've cut the flashbacks for brevity and perhaps laziness. Onto the meat of the story! Cullen's meat!

A ramble of tents staggered through the forest, weaving a haphazard nightmare for the perimeter patrols. But no matter how the contingent struggled through fatigue to assemble camp, all moods lifted at the red lyrium’s notable absence. Sweet silence reigned in the lulls between warbling birds and hacking axes. The Commander deployed a few knights to chop a clearing for cookfires, grooms to curry the horses, soldiers to dig latrines, and a rudimentary corral constructed for the mounts.

With the Inquisitor out ranging, any pride Cullen felt at inflicting a deathblow to a dragon shriveled beneath the onerous press of duty. Necessary tasks hurtled him through spells of exhaustion. Stopping to rest only served to infuse the aches deeper into his joints. As all hands engaged to settle camp, the dead dragon remained untouched. The prodigious carcass still blocked the road. Each time Ser Cullen checked on the supply train, the creature’s vacant, glassy stare seemed to observe him. The dead eye glinted in humor, as though saying _Almost, but perhaps next time._

The Commander shivered beneath the low lying sun. The next time he met a dragon would be too soon.

Scents of death and singed wood yielded to the savory aroma of salted ram stew and freshly cleaved wood. By the time Ser Cullen made way to the Inquisitor’s tent, his troops had long since shed their armor and gathered around the cook fires.

"You look like shit," Blackwall greeted from where he sat on a stump by the tent, deftly unbuckling his spiked pauldron.

Cullen snorted at that. He’d done little more than take a wet cloth to his face, remaining spattered in the blood and soot of the battle of the prior hours. "Yes, well Minrathous wasn't built in a day and our Inquisitor is still exploring with Scout Harding. But, I suppose I should be grateful for this reprieve from her ire."

"That, Ser, was nowhere near the brunt of my lady's temper. Usually involves cruder language. A few creative epithets dragging promiscuous mothers into the squabble,” he explained amenable enough. “No, she wasn't angry. She was scared."

"Mmphm," Cullen grunted and placed his hands on his pommel, seeking distraction in the disorderly assortment of tents several paces farther away than normal. "There was no reason for her to fear. I’m her Tactical Advisor. I knew what I was doing."

"You know what Bull called you?" Blackwall asked abruptly, fixing his eyes on the disheveled knight. 

"No, and I must admit, I'm afraid to ask."

" _Basalit-an._ It means ‘worthy of respect’.”

"Alright?" The knight turned his attention back on Blackwall.

“That means you’re brashly courageous in the face of insurmountable odds Usually a bit of a suicidal element to those the Qunari regard with prestige.”

"I wouldn't have..."

"You bloody came within inches of a dragons mouth," Blackwall stared him, not with Nymeria's incredulous anger, but with bleak seriousness. "And if it had gone just a hair differently, if your assumption had been wrong, we'd be pulling your bones out of the dragon’s belly in addition to the treasure.”

Cullen scoffed. “Someone had to do something.”

“Someone was doing something,” Blackwall matched Cullen’s peeved tone and tugged at the straps of his own breast plate. “And if you could have taken your eyes off Nym for a bloody second, you would have seen Solas, Madame Vivienne, and the Tevinter all working some ice spell to momentarily freeze the beast.”

The knight’s scarred mouth twisted in irritation. His gloved hand clamped into a fist on his pommel.

The other man pressed on. “Nym’s nettled because she was scared _for you_. I saw more fear in her eyes at you running right beneath the dragon's snout than her crouched behind that shield. What you rashly jeopardized was excessive and reckless."

Cullen bristled at that. His lips pulled back and flashed clenching teeth. "Do not bark at me as if I am some rangy whelp in ill-fitting armor. The moment I hold my life as of more value than the Inquisitor's is the moment she must seek another general."

"But she's not asking you to die for her. She needs you to live. Maker's balls! It’s like I'm talking to one of these bloody logs!" Blackwall threw up his hands and stared towards the sky in exasperation. "You're as bloody stubborn as she is. Don't need to carry a flint and fire-steel. I’ll just have the two of you rub together until you start a fire."

Whether it be his own irritation or an unbidden image of Blackwall's suggestion, the color rose high on the knight's cheeks. "Well, don’t toss away that fire-steel just yet. I doubt she'll see fit to rub herself upon me anytime soon."

The older man smirked, a secretive smile that may have garnered some humor from Cullen's assumption. "Don't believe she'll relinquish you that easy. Woman’s quite tenacious in spite of arguments and trespasses."

Eyeing him in some furtive appraisal, Blackwall cast off the remaining piece of his armor. "Go get cleaned up, Commander. I've volunteered to help carve the scaly bastard. So there's no use of my washing up and looking pretty whilst wrangling the innards of a dead dragon."

The knight opened his mouth to protest before the other man cut him off. "Harding came back nigh twenty minutes ago. They found the dragon's lair and have pillaged it thoroughly. There's a grotto near the lair. According to Harding, Nym's washing up there and requested my company. But perhaps you should go in my stead. Give you two a chance to talk in private."

Cullen’s heart crawled into his throat, forcing him to gulp it back down where it landed with a splash in his stomach. "Are you sending me to her?"

Blackwall rose from the stump. The shorter man met the Commander’s eyes and ignored the disparity of height and station. "Aye. I daresay I am." The burly warrior stalked past the knight, brushing his side but not completely shouldering into him. “Judging by the size of the beast, I’ll be gone until late tonight. You two must make do without me. Don't wait up."

And with that, Blackwall strode off through the camp. 

Exhausted physically and mentally, Ser Cullen massaged his throbbing temples. He stood alone now. As alone as he had been this morn before Blackwall interrupted his lauds. And in this tenuous solitude, the nagging voice of hindsight's discretion gnawed at his conviction. For all the grief trusted allies were giving him, perhaps they were right about the reckless act. One wrong assumption teetered between victory and his brutal demise. 

Pondering the delicacy of his own mortality didn't last long. 

"Ser?" Briggs asked from behind him. "Commander, I've come to report that camp is staked and the troops are settled in. Do you have any further orders?"

Cullen considered the innocuous request for a few moments. "Yes, take my armor and have it cleaned and polished. My cloak needs cleaning as well. See that dinner is served to the men without me. I'll be washing up away from camp.”

 _Just to talk to her alone,_ Cullen told himself, attempting to quell the giddy flutter in his stomach. _An innocent parley to put her at ease,_ he thought, ignoring the trembling in fingers as they worked his buckles.

He’d walked some distance from the encampment, following the lightly trodden trail of broken twigs and faint bootprints. The closer he drew to the purported grotto entrance, the thicker the air clotted. No longer carrying the nip of crisp winter’s breeze but a dense, wet heat reminiscent of summers in Honnleath and the docks of Kinloch Hold. The heat poured through a narrow fissure rent in the mossy limestone hillside. Craggy stone sweated and glistened, robustly beaded with condensation. Torchlight flickered from an ancient sconce, catching in the myriad studs of dew like facets in a jewel. If she were anywhere, it had to be here. And yet Cullen lingered at the cave’s entrance. He dithered over whether to proceed or return to camp to wash himself with a basin.

The latter option nearly won out. As he readied to turn around, an echo of familiar feminine groan reverberated through the opening. An exhalation of bone-deep contentment belonging only to one person. 

Maker preserve him. Who was he kidding? Cullen couldn’t return to camp as a man couldn’t fly back up the cliff he just threw himself from. The knight sidled through the rocky crevasse holding his clean change of clothes in a burlap satchel. The cavern’s heat kissed his cheeks as the outside’s cold stole a few more nips upon his back. Wisps of steam purled in the air in a fine, albeit wet mist. Frigid air sucked the fog through the cramped passage, drawing out the heavy, humid mineral smell of the grotto beyond. Vapor misted on his face as it wafted out, condensing into tiny beads on his thick stubble and eyebrows. 

Leaving the torch at the entrance, Cullen simply felt his way forward, hoping that the scuffing of his boots served as an informal announcement of his presence. The passage stretched mercifully short, allowing his eyes enough time to readjust before stepping into the main cavern. Shafts of soft light filtered in through looming fissures in the high ceiling. The last few fingers of afternoon sunlight glinted off the water…as well as the dagger in the Inquisitor’s hand. 

Nymeria stood thigh-deep in a steaming pool, clean skin radiantly glistening in the light. Her wary gaze trained on him through his place in the shadows, ready to strike should the situation call for brute force. But once she realized it was Cullen, she sighed in relief, laying the dagger on the low pool ledge beside her. He assessed her nudity, fully appreciating it only when he was convinced she wouldn’t geld him. Some soldier’s instincts of self-preservation never rested, even in the presence of a beautiful bathing woman.

Taut silence endured as an armistice against the words battering the back of his teeth. Those unsaid words coiled inside him, tightening around his throat like a catchpole. But words were useless now. Around her, he lost both guile and eloquence, reducing him to fumbling at half-stale platitudes or excuses. 

“The hot spring feeds into the dragons lair,” she said, carefully impersonal. “Didn’t find a hoard, but I didn’t find another dragon either.”

He nodded his head and unbuckled his sword belt, laying it beside a rock along the pool’s edge. Sunlight bounced off the immaculate water, rippling upon wet walls smooth from centuries of erosion. Dripping stalactites, burbling tributaries, and the sibilant sound of his leather laces opening suffused the small space. He pushed his breeches and small clothes off his hips in one smooth motion, unable to shake the feeling of an intangible force crushing down around them. 

Cullen watched as the stiffness in her back slowly melted. Her shoulders slouched but she made no effort to cover herself. Instead, Lady Trevelyan returned to her ablutions. She squeezed the last froths of soap from her hair, conveniently absorbed in the suds floating upon the water’s glassy surface. The knight suspected the diversion had nothing to do propriety, but her own last ditch effort to thwart the unrelenting tension bonded between them. Regardless of her feigned obliviousness, Cullen felt the Inquisitor’s rogue senses extending, tracking his movements out the corner of her eye.

He committed to their tight silence and pulled the soiled undertunic off his back, rendering him as naked as Nymeria stood, dressed only in bloody grime. Visceral impetus flattened palms on Cullen’s shoulders, compelling each step he expects will carry him directly towards her. The water rose with each stride, soaking warmth sluicing over his shins and thighs until he stood beside her. The two of them alone in this seclusion, more naked than he’d ever felt in his entire life but without a tatter of shame.

She seemed smaller here, yet just as indomitable, perhaps even more so. And when she looked up at him, her eyes burn with the wordless acknowledgment of the compulsion bearing down on them. She felt it too. Yet those eyes observe him with a peculiar detached quality. Seeing him not as a man, not as an advisor, not as a soldier, but some fabled beast that she must convince herself is genuine. Nymeria lifted her hand, breaching the vast blockade of decorum to lovingly stroke her thumb down the scar on his lip.

When Cullen kissed her, he tasted the copper tang of blood and the fine grit of smoke. Of life and death. Of chaste prohibitions relenting to intimacy. A fevered kiss not born of desperation to drown ones sorrow, but to simply drift in the rampant current. 

And unlike most of the other kisses he’d ever shared, it was perfect. 

Their inevitable kiss stoked her to living flame in his arms, drawing her from the distant, dazed plane one traverses once the adrenaline of battle subsides. The same emotionally desolate plane he dwelled upon for years. But together, they are both wholly alive once more. His hands cradled her cheek, thumbs tracing the tiny scar chiseled into the curve of jaw. Without opening his eyes, Cullen knew he streaked grime across her freshly pristine cheek and neck.

His head swam. The deeper he nestled into her embrace, Ser Cullen knew she’d be unlike the previous ventures into carnality. This was different. This moment limned not with desperation or curiosity, but the smoldering drive of admiration and affection. He groaned into her mouth, savoring her softness. It may not have been anything like the fantasies he conceived, all alone in bed on those lonely nights. Those tawdry imaginings could never do this moment any justice. It was everything he ever wanted of a first kiss, and nothing he expected. An encounter so frightfully intimate that he’d never dare come to the grotto if he knew what awaited him.

**** 

She felt his ironclad control crumbling beneath the touch of her lips. Strange how something so soft, so yielding as a kiss could compromise one of the toughest knights she’d ever met. The connection surpassed physical longing, lay beyond the triteness of carnality and embedded in the soul. This kiss altered them to the core. Nymeria felt her affection lap at Cullen’s discipline like the ocean does to the coast. Her tenderness eroded all that persevered before she touched him. The more pliant his emotions became, the harder certain parts of his body nudged against her. Calloused fingers cupped her jaw, not crushing but simply stiffening like a snare. And she stepped willingly into the alluring trap of this man’s arms. His adoration like the amber of his eyes, capturing her in a timeless embrace. 

Maker, what was she getting herself into? 

When they both broke away, Cullen stared at her, wide-eyed and panting as though waiting for Nymeria to dissolve or to wake up from a dream. “I’m…erm…that was really nice.”

She ran the tip of her tongue over her tingling lips, already longing for his touch. “I think that was a kiss.”

Boyish joy crinkled at the corners of his eyes. “I suppose it was.”

“Might I say, Commander, that you are certainly a man who doesn’t do anything by halves,” she teased and drifted her indicative touch down his naked flank and hip.

“Maker,” he hissed, suddenly conscious of their close proximity. Cullen stepped back half of a pace to give her room. To his chagrin, the exclusively masculine part of his body insisted on grazing her belly. Abashed, he began to take another step backwards before she stopped him with a hand on his elbow. 

“Relax, Cullen. If I didn’t want you here, I think most of the blood splattered on you would be yours by now,” she said.

He chuckled at the sentiment, his mirth echoing in the dim recesses of the cavern. “I suppose you’re right. It’s just…after what happened earlier, I’ve been jumping from one task to the other. And seeing you here, having our first moment of privacy after what happened last night…I may have acted on impulse.” He rubbed the back of his neck.

“Dare I say, I’m enjoying this bout of impulsiveness.” Nymeria ran her fingers through his hair. Her smile broke wider as she fondled a single golden lock glowing in the delicate sunlight. "Your hair is curly? I was wondering why Varric calls you that."

The knight lightheartedly grimaced, scrunching his eyes shut but grinning all the same. "Blasted humidity. I've spent so much time encamped in the cold mountains that I believed my secret safe." Cullen raked his fingers over his scalp, confirming that the waves had indeed drawn into loose coils. 

"You don't like them? I think they're adorable!" she beamed.

"Which is exactly why I keep my hair short. The Commander of the Inquisition is hardly formidable with his adorable, curly tresses,” he remarked, kneeling down in the water to soak his hair, obliterating the offending curls. As he stood, errant droplets trickled down his jaw and dripped from his strong chin. Though she had enjoyed his curls, the wet look enhanced the rawness of Cullen’s primal allure. Adorable failed to come to mind concerning the lean muscled, aroused man dripping wet and naked before her.

Clean shaven cheeks of morning disappeared beneath thick scruff of late day. Quite a surprise given the Commander's chiseled body sported little body hair. Golden curls dusted his arms and legs, turning copper where wet. A scant patch of hair grew on his chest and thinned over his abs. Darker curls sprouted from the base of his manhood, tapering up towards his navel and also covering his heavy testicles. Maker, this man was an excellent specimen of masculinity. Small wonder women flocked around him. The greedy pride of last night flared in her chest. He was gorgeous and he was hers. 

Nymeria fought her baseborn urge to stalk around the knight, avoiding inspecting him as one does when purchasing livestock. But she wondered if he had a similar, though different hued, dusting of hair over his arse that Blackwall had. 

Blackwall. The thought of the man gnawed at whatever virtue remained, but she also readily recalled the discussion of the morning. Maker, that morning felt years away, not hours, but the permission abided all the same. He wanted her to indulge herself, to indulge her Commander as well. Having said Commander here, obviously wanting and too intoxicating for her own good, subdued any nagging doubt she had. This wasn't how a proper lady of title acted, but when had that ever troubled her in the bower?

Abruptly aware that she was gawking at him, Nymeria caressed his scruffy jaw. She flitted her fingertips over those luscious lips before her roaming touch traveled south, lingering atop the strong heartbeat battering his sternum. Cullen smiled, laying his hand upon hers.

"I am at your disposal, Inquisitor.” The knight held her gaze, sealing his pledge with a chaste kiss upon her palm. 

"But you saved my life,” she said, grazing the back of her knuckles across his silken lips. "If anything, I am beholden to you, Ser."

“Well...erm...I wasn't exactly keeping a tally. I mean...you've probably saved my life more than ten fold by closing the breach. So...while you haven't exactly jumped in front of a blade for me…” His eyes darted to the side and rubbed his nape. "Maker's breath, how do you have the innate ability to reduce me to a stammering lad _in or out_ of my armor?"

"Funny. I don't recall much stammering last night," she pointed out with a naughty wetting of her lips.

Steady hands disciplined from decades of wielding sword and shield fit into the contour of her waist, but even she felt the eager twitch of his fingers, enthusiastic as an unruly horse hobbled from running free range. Tension thrummed through his nerves and reverberated into her body.

"You're a bit grubby, Commander." Her fingertips streaked the black smears of blood and soot over his chest. The substance also left prominent smudges on her cheeks, breasts, and where he'd kneaded her hips. 

"Maker, I’m getting you all dirty," he spoke, mildly mortified despite the incipient affection between them. Any of Cullen’s efforts to wash her off left a froth of maroon suds sliding over her otherwise pristine skin. "Apparently I excel at making the mess but fumble at cleaning it up."

"Allow me,” Nymeria suggested. She snatched her washcloth from where it floated beside her. 

The drenched cloth swabbed over his chest in broad circles, coating him with the scent of her expensive Orlesian soap. She expected him to stop her at some point, but he remained perfectly compliant, even lifting his arms or leaning into her cleansing touch. For all his easy compliance with his front, she noted the wary set of his shoulders as she walked behind him. Was it having someone at his back or having her out of his sight which unnerved?

Safely out of view, Nymeria let her hungry gaze travel the valley of Cullen’s spine, down past the tapered waist to settle on the only body part denied to her the night before. Maker, the man had a fabulous arse. Tight and well muscled from Templar training and horseback riding. A thin dusting of hair did indeed blanket his buttocks and sprouted over the backs of his gorgeous thighs. Her knees nearly buckled beneath her at a stray vision of this exquisite arse thrusting between her thighs. Nymeria winsomely sighed and focused on the broad, filthy expanse of his shoulders where grime dried in every muscular crevasse and splattered over his nape.

"What's this one from?” she asked and swiped the cloth across a rather large scar slashed from the top of one shoulder blade to the bottom of the other. 

"Harrowing gone awry," he spoke plainly. "Or the time I learned that terror demons have claws sharp enough to cut through steel."

She twisted her mouth in remorse. "I shouldn't have asked. No such thing as a fond scar."

He turned to face her, wearing a knowing little smirk. Cullen knelt before her and bowed his head. "Here," he guided her hand over a rather sizable knot of scar tissue where his thick hair grew thinner. "That one's from a wooden training sword. And probably the only one I truly deserved."

Her eyebrows lifted in confusion. “You're fond of being dunted on the head during training? You weren't wearing a helm?"

Although she couldn't see it, she sensed a flash if that lopsided smirk. "My sister, Mia, kept a diary but never bothered hiding it. She prided herself on writing in code. Swearing her secrets were uncrackable because her siblings weren’t smart enough to decipher it. Well, her code was _nigh_ uncrackable. I got a better look one morning as she attended her lessons. An hour in my hands and I worked out the cipher. First thing I decrypted was the list of village lads she had a crush on."

"Oh, no. Tell me you weren't that kind of sibling,” Nymeria shook her head, smiling, and traced her fingertips over the scar tissue, answering her own question.

"I was her bored little brother. It was practically my duty to meddle. And not because I felt entitled to invade her privacy, but because she so brazenly flaunted her intelligence over mine. Idle hands and such," he reasoned jovially with a wave of his hand. "So the ordeal may have ended with her chasing me around the statue in the village green as she flailed my training sword at me.”

“For deciphering her diary?”

“And I also may have read off the list of her infatuations as loud as a village crier in the green,” he admitted and his ears tipped red. “My mother caught us mid chase and demanded we stop that instant. I stopped, Mia didn’t. Woke up staring at the clouds sliding across the sky and a headache bubbling like molten lead."

“Difficult to believe _you_ would stir yourself into any sort of mischief," she mused, lathering soap in his wet curls to wash the filth from his hair.

"Not much tolerance for jesters in the Order. Antics are usually born of boredom, of which is in short supply during Templar training.”

Nymeria giggled. “So you’re saying that if we lightened your load, you’d fall in league with Sera and start playing pranks?” She cupped the steaming water in her hands, rinsing the pink suds from his hair.

She detected the mischievous smirk back on his lips. “Believe me, I plan on exacting much worse retaliation than tilting her desk. But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you Inquisitor?"

"Your hair is filthy," she diverted with less than guileful grace. Instead, Nymeria massaged her fingers along his scalp, rubbing in lazy, firm circles until he groaned. She swept her thumbs over his temples and dipped between his eyebrows.

"Maker, that is divine," he groaned and closed his eyes, lavishing in the soothing ministration.

“On your knees and calling for the Maker. You’re not going to start praying, are you, Ser?” she teased, the pads off her fingers rubbing in firmer strokes upon his scalp.

“No. But there are other things I can do while on my knees.” He suggested and gazed up at her through glassy eyes. “Other forms of veneration I can offer you.”

Cullen shifted forward, nuzzling the damp flesh between her breasts. His lips grazed the steadily accelerating pulse of her heartbeat, leaving it with a little kiss before fondling the luscious globes of her breast. Every move enacted tortuously slow until the knight’s composure crumbled to fervid nips and sucks, encouraged by the broken mewling clawing deep in her throat. He favored both of her stiff nipples with a suckle between the hard ridge of his teeth, coaxing and biting the tender peaks until her hands wound in his hair like the reins of a bucking stallion. 

In a nearly imperceptible torrid motion, Cullen pulled from her nipple and plunged his tongue into her nether curls, parting the slick folds of pillowy flesh which ached for this moment. Nymeria loosed a brittle oath as his tongue stroked the hood of her clitoris, the tiny bulb shrouded and inaccessible in this position. Standing, she couldn’t splay her legs wide enough to get him where he needed. Fingers wefted into his golden locks and reluctantly pulled him back. 

“I need to lay down,” she insisted, moving to find a place among the craggy ledges until he caught her hips.

Water sloshed as he leaped to his feet. Cullen steered her backwards, his palming handfuls of her bottom until her calves butted a low ledge. The stone offering her purchase felt smooth and warm beneath her buttocks, adding kindling to her own roiling heat in the cauldron of her womb. The knight genuflected once again in graceful kneel as if to receive his accolade. The quicksilver fire of his covetous gaze flitted over every curve, every scar, every crease. Despite the glaring slashes of scars rent into the silk of her body, he stared down at her with utter adoration. Gentle yet assertive hands spread Nymeria’s legs as one spreads a flower’s petals to see the bud inside. The raw power and want of him evident in the quivering fingers playing her nether lips and the rampant pulse fluttering in the hollow of his throat. How could Cullen exhibit such tenderness so close to fulfilling his voracious need?

The warmth of his amber gaze scorched through his heavy hooded eyes as his nose buried in her nether curls. Nymeria rutted up to meet his agile tongue, oblivious to the unrelenting slab beneath her elbows. Dim streaks of sunlight glowed upon his alabaster skin, shimmering in his lip scar. Cooling droplets pattered from the ends of his locks and onto her thighs and stomach. The scruff of chin bristled the delicate folds as he laved her clit in broad strokes and sucks. One finger slid inside her. Then another. Her body possessively clamped down on them, greedy for any stimulation. Even the initial shock of his thumb stroking the notched rim of her anus incited her ardor. All while his piercing gaze swept up and held her hopelessly enthrall. The man didn’t need words. He could command her with a mere look. The very prospect wracked a shiver down her spine and into her womb. Release stormed inside her.

“C-Cullen,” she whimpered before her cry of completion ripped from her throat. “Cullen! Oh, Maker! Fuck me!” 

Savage bliss discharging into her toes and and surged towards Cullen’s mouth. He withdrew his fingers and dipped his tongue inside her, drinking the honey of her ecstasy. Nymeria writhed through her aftershocks to the subtle touch of his wet fingers stroking the backs of her thighs.

Cullen seemed content to lay his head upon her thigh and watch her pant. Her juices glittered in the dense stubble around his mouth and chin. All the ineffable command which imbued his gaze receded. Now the knight slicked the wet hair from his forehead with a boyishly triumphant grin. "I made you orgasm."

Nymeria would’ve chuckled at his celebratory delight had she the energy. She managed to nod lamely, letting him pull her to stand as she didn't trust the strength of her knees. Her body sought the strength of his embrace. “That you did."

"I've, erm, I've never done that to a woman. Not with my mouth anyway," he flushed and looked down at her with warm brown eyes.

"Really?" Nymeria's shock eclipsed her pleasant exhaustion. She twirled a sodden, dark gold lock around her finger. "Surely you must have women battering down your door?"

She went to kiss him and he evaded. Her breath constricted in her throat as if she were garrotted. Had she said something wrong?

"Er, I don't have anything to wash my mouth with.” His ruddy cheeks blushed deeper at having said that.

"Why would you have to wash your mouth?"

"Women don't like to taste themselves, do they?" His eyes darted to the side before returning to her. "I'd like to kiss you."

Somehow she stifled her giggle, wresting it in her chest in a clearing of her throat. Nymeria smiled sweetly, warm enough so his didn’t feel like a fool. Crooking her finger, she said, “Come here, Ser.”

Despite his dubious suspicion, Cullen leaned in nonetheless. Nymeria cradled his stubbled jaw in her hands, brushing her lips with the barest touch over his. She smiled between each caress. Kisses mounted in intensity until she plunged her tongue in his mouth, relishing the tangy flavor of her nectar on his own tongue. The Commander groaned, low and rumbling, resonating in her veins. Diffident tension seeped from his shoulders as he smiled against her lips. 

"It tastes of you and I, Cullen," she whispered against his lips. "Why would I want to wash it away?"

"Besides.” She bit his jaw and nipped down his damp neck, his hard chest, only pausing to suckle his nipple. "Would you not want to kiss me after I did this?"

His auger gaze clung to her as she rambled kisses down his stomach. Nymeria looked up, watching his eyes fall half-lidded when she ran her tongue along the underside of his length. His body heat eclipsed the water’s warmth, infusing Cullen’s musky scent with the soap and earthiness of the hot spring. Potent nuances of citrus and sandalwood rolled from the darker gold thatch tangled around the base of his erection, soaking her to the marrow.

There were very few people who brought Lady Nymeria Trevelyan to her knees, and the Commander of the Inquisition became one of them. Her tongue flicked up a bead of bitter salty precum from the slit, inspiring a shudder in the powerful thigh muscles underneath her fingers. She purred, brushing wind chafed lips over the delicate flesh of his cockhead. The Commander made the sweetest, toe-curling sound as she drew him in her mouth.

"Maker, Nymeria,” Cullen groaned above her.

Stifling her own mewling, Nymeria took half of his throbbing shaft past her lips. The tip of her tongue traced the hard ridge of his foreskin before slipping below the tight sheath, wrenching a ragged grunt from his throat. Long fingers tangled in her hair, threading into the damp tresses, neither urging or dissuading. Simply seeking another connection fastened between his body and hers. 

Spurred by his response, she leaned forward, swallowing more him until the spongy crown nudged near the back of her mouth. The muscles of his arse clenched as her hands urged him a fraction deeper, perilously close to agitating her gag reflex. The Commander was a lengthy man. 

"Your mouth feels fantastic wrapped around my prick," he rasped in taxed syllables. 

Such vulgar compliments coming from this virtuous man flared her loins like a bonfire. Wet need gratuitously slicked between her quivering thighs. Nymeria glanced up, mesmerized by her lover’s face taut with absolute bliss. Enraptured by the deep set lids clenched shut, leaden with lust. The musky sweat shining on his brow and chest. The feral quirk of his scarred lip paired with the barest show of white teeth. 

So it came as a complete surprise when he gently pulled her off instead of plundering every quarter her throat could give up. Cullen hauled her to her feet, his careful composure wearing thin in urgent movements. 

"I want to come inside you," he spoke in crude honesty and her muscles clenched in agreeable lust. “Come on, let’s get dressed and head back to camp.”

“Why not here?” she forced the question into some rhythm of coherency.

The Commander’s brows pinched. “Wouldn’t you feel more comfortable back at the tent?” 

“Perhaps,” Nymeria threaded her fingers with his, bringing his knuckles to her lips where she nipped at each one. “But as you’ll come to find out, I’m rather loud. I can keep quiet when needed, but I’d like enjoy out first time together without muffling my cries.”

Piercing eyes unfocused at the suggestion. Cullen nodded quietly. He waded through the pool, returning with the bag of his clothes in hand. Without further explanation, he laid out the neatly folded cloth on the low stone ledge.

“You take precautions against getting with child, correct?” he hazarded to ask as if it were prickly territory for discussion. “Erm, I suppose some sort of tea or herb?”

“Dorian brews a potion for me,” she admitted and watched as his shoulders melted with relief. “Difficult to be stealthy with a big belly and swollen feet. So yes, I take precautions.”

The knight reclined on the bare stone between the piles of his clothing, hesitating at their scanty accommodations. “Is this alright? You…don’t mind being on top? Elsewise I might bruise your back even with the padding.”

“The best we’re going to do unless you take me _a tergo_ ,” she agreed. His wet body hair brushed the insides of her knees as Nymeria straddled his thighs. “Aren't you uncomfortable?"

He smirked up at her in sensual fondness that burned with hunger. "I spent my vigil laying upon a cold stone floor, dressed only in a sarong with a single candle for warmth and light. This is most assuredly preferable, and a lot less lonely."

She emitted a pleasant hum and shifted up, wedging her sodden cleft along the hard ridge of him, savoring his groan of contentment.

His hands girded around her waist as he ground along the inviting wetness, dragging every inch of him against her petals in a salacious tease. "I've never felt this yearning for anyone. In all my years, you’re the only woman who’s ever stirred me so deeply, so inexorably.” He rose up from where he laid, cupping her face with his large hands and locking his earnest, torrid eyes with hers. "Andraste's light, I want to plunge inside your quim. Lose myself. Worship and ravage you simultaneously with my prick until you take every last drop of my seed.”

Dirty words poured out of his mouth and stoked the coals of her own merciless desire. She didn't realize how her teeth bit into her bottom lip, mind fixated on the ridge of his manhood gliding over her engorged clit. She needed him inside her.

"Fuck me, Cullen," she urged in a broken whimper, pressing her forehead to his. 

"What did you say?” The smug twitch in the corner of his lip belied his confusion. Leave it to the knight who flustered over trivial dalliances to play cavalier upon succumbing to lust. "I'm sorry, Inquisitor. I didn't quite catch that.”

She growled and reached down, grasping his shaft and positioning his bulbous crown at her entrance. But the Commanders implacable grip on her hips pinned his length between them, immovable no matter how she writhed and threatened. 

"Please, Cullen.” Nymeria was all too aware she pitifully whined but didn't care. Not with his cock blazing against her nether lips. For what he outmatched her in strength, Nymeria surpassed him in eloquence. “Haven’t you thought about this, Commander? About having me, your Inquisitor, naked and straddling your lap? My quim flooding like this hot spring over your thighs?”

The cavalier mask cracked with the slight snarl thinning his scarred lip. 

Nymeria leaned in to whisper beside the shell of his ear. “The Commander of the most powerful armies in Thedas swiving his noble Inquisitor. Or do you prefer the Fereldan peasant pummeling balls deep into his highborn lady? Making me cry your name as you claim every hole of my—“

Provocative words shattered him like overheated glass. Cullen lifted her up as she guided him into the sacred heat of her body. His strong features tightened into a look of pure contentment as the hot velvet of her wet channel enveloped him. Heavy lidded amber eyes struggled open amidst the pleasure to meet her gaze, savoring the physical bond. 

“Maker…Nymeria…” Cullen choked out. His hips bucked, burying the entirety of length, jarring her cervix. 

A strangled whimper edged with pain summoned Cullen from his hazy pleasure. He immediately shot up and stilled his hips. "Did I hurt you?"

Nymeria squirmed atop him, raising herself higher on her knees with a composing breath. “Just a little longer than what I'm used to," she coaxed away his anxiety with a kiss and squeeze of her internal muscles.

“I’ve wanted this for a long time,” he emitted something between a chuckle and groan. “Longer than I should have.”

“I’ve wanted this for a long time too, Cullen,” she gently cradled his jaw in her hands, her unflinching stare conveying her honesty . 

Either the words or her intimate gaze propelled him. His lips captured her mouth in a hungry kiss as his hips thrust. Fingers bit into her bottom, assisting with each jolting ascension of her hips. Wet skin slapped loudly as their bodies met through the undulation. Her thighs trembled to match his ferocity, his virile passion outpacing that of her own. She was vaguely aware that her nails clawed the flexing cords of his shoulder, earning a little snarl from her lover. Had they been in bed, he’d undoubtedly have flipped her on her back by now. Everything about this man enraptured, all-encompassing and possessive. Each pump of his hips further ebbed the awareness of where she began and he ended, melding them together with vicious sensuality. 

His thrusts plunged deeper again, but the pain paled to pleasure of this coupling. True to her intentions, Nymeria mewled and moaned, only falling silent in the muffle of his mouth devouring her cries.

“Come for me, Nymeria,” he bade against her mouth, his eyes holding her as a lion does his prey. “Don’t hold back. You cry so sweetly when you come. I want to hear it echoing off the walls of this blasted cavern.” 

Lost in the sensation of their joining, Nymeria groped for his hand, guiding it to the splayed apex of her thighs. She worked his calloused thumb over the sensitive pearl. A few quick swipes and the flame quickened in her womb and clamped around him. Liquid fire rushed and flooded her blood, alighting the tips of her nerves until she cried his name. The cave cried it back at her. 

His own end chased hers. The knight bit off a poetically obscene oath and shuddered in staggered thrusts, emptying himself inside the snug haven of her body. His lips brushed the erratic pulse point in her neck before he went limp, falling back and hitting his head with an audible _thud_ on the stone slab.

“Shit!” Nymeria propped herself on trembling elbows, keeping his flagging prick burrowed between her thighs. “Cullen, are you alright?”

The Commander clenched his eyes shut as two fresh puddles of color stained his cheeks. Broad shoulders shook in silence before he released his laughter. “Hard head, remember? Knew I wouldn’t get through that without looking like an arse somehow.” Cullen reached behind and rubbed his the back of his head.

She joined his chuckle, giving succor to the pride which suffered the brunt of his injury. “That’s what you get for teasing me, Ser.”

“What?” He grinned. “Can you blame me for wanting to hear that filthy request over and over?” 

Exhausted and sweaty, the two lovers laid in place for some minutes, listening the constant drip of water interspersed with panting breaths and preternaturally steady heartbeats. 

“If we don’t move, I’m going to fall asleep on you,” Nymeria nuzzled into the light hair on his chest. “And that will be quite the eyeful for whatever search party come looking for us.”

As she shifted to climb off him, his flaccid penis slipped from her body, releasing the tribute he left along with her own juices. Cullen dipped his fingers into the fluids running down her thigh and smiled fondly. 

“I’ve got you dirty again,” he spoke, his brilliant smile stretching from ear to ear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up, even more smut now that this tedious character development is out of the way! Cullen will show Nymeria that he's quite adept at a lil dirty talk as well.


	8. Scouting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Meddlesome Guest/A Little Scouting/The Vicious Encounter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *blinks eyes and emerges from cave* Bet you thought you saw the last of me. I've had this aging in my writing folder for weeks like cheap wine. Finally going to post it and quit agonizing over every damn word.

The last person Cullen ever expected to see again sat in his new desk chair, idly twirling her dagger in that incomprehensible amalgam of boredom and mischief. 

"Not sure if anyone's told you, but you have a gaping hole in your roof,” Marian Hawke spoke to the spinning dagger in her fingers instead of the Commander. As Skyhold was in the initial stages of a badly needed renovation, the ex-Templar had crumbling towers and broken bridges to tackle before fixing his roof. 

Cullen quietly closed the door to his office, never letting the Champion of Kirkwall out of his sight. Any dolt who let Marian Hawke slip behind his back usually lived to regret it…or was never alotted the chance to do so. The knight forced a stony brow, but cold sweat beaded over his nape and slid between his knotted shoulders. Three years missing and here she was. Hardly a fortuitous circumstance.

Traces of incense amid fur and leather overpowered the towers’s inherent aroma of rotten wood. Hawke’s scent mystified Cullen. The rogue always smelled as if she’d just left a Chantry in spite of her fierce aversion to such sanctums. Every facet of the quarrelsome woman contradicted and coincided in peculiar harmony. 

Aquamarine eyes shifted on him, mesmerizing and unnerving in their acute intensity. Eyes that held laughter at a joke no one else was privy to. Hawke flashed a gamine grin beneath a slanted crimson smear of blood. “Oh, you’ve lost your curls? And look at that lip scar! Aren’t we the picture of rugged charm? Though the mantle is a tad outlandish, but I suppose you deserve a little flash after wearing that dreadful Templar armor all those years.” 

"Hello, Hawke," Cullen greeted as warm as a cold hearth, his hand lingering over the hilt of his sword. His vigilant stare snapped on Hawke’s twirling blade. “And to what do I owe the pleasure? Why does the sly Champion visit the very last person who ever wanted to see her face again?”

"Now that is untoward!" Her thin brows lifted in feigned indignation. Jovial mocking withered to incredulity as she eyed his hand hovering atop his hilt. With a sleek flourish, Hawke sheathed the blade back in its scabbard. The metal whispered as it found home. “Really, Cullen. You think I’d dawdle about in your dilapidated office for an hour if I meant to kill you?” 

"Of course not. Too discreet,” he spoke through bloodless, tightened lips. His heightened pulse began to slow. “Shall I have one of my aides fetch Seeker Cassandra? The good Seeker’s been sniffing your trail for years now. How thrilled she’ll be to find it leads right beneath her nose.”

The rogue crinkled her own nose in a sour grimace. “That battle ax? She could have tried asking me nicely. A note perhaps? Instead she sequestered my best friend for months on end and dispatched a less than cheerful retinue of soldiers and sellswords to the hunt me down like some bloody wolf’s head. I fled Kirkwall to prevent a swiving Exalted March, not because what I did was wrong. While my actions may not shine in the narratives of history, they were done with the best intentions.”

“She just wanted to talk to Varric. You and I both know Seekers have employed worse methods of persuasion to collect intelligence.”

Hawke emitted a scoffing chortle and waved a dismissive hand. “Yes, yes. And Varric will salivate at any opportunity to talk someone’s ear off for hours on end. If anything, he was probably the one torturing her.” 

Cullen’s pounding heartbeat had almost returned to a steady cadence. Yet he kept alert. She may not be there to kill him, but she hadn’t specified _why_ she was there either.

“So why did you not come after the Conclave?” he paced restlessly, never taking his flinty eyes off her. “An Exalted March is a frolic in the sun compared what we’re facing. The whole of blasted Thedas is a single spark away from burning to cinders, and you’re off galavanting with apostates and pirates.”

She arched one of her thin eyebrows as if she found him dim. “Because someone has to pace outside the periphery so that they can see the whole picture. You always did have a bad habit of burying your nose in the dirt instead of sniffing for trouble on the winds. And besides, your new Inquisitor seems capable enough…albeit uncommonly modest of her own merits.”

“Not all of us sip from a fathomless well of arrogance, Hawke,” he muttered before his eyes widened in realization. There went his heart hammering against his cuirass again. “Wait, you’ve spoken to her? When?” 

“Hour ago. Varric thought it best I have a little talk with her before making my grand entrance,” Marian beamed. “Isn’t Nymeria a saucy, sweet little thing?”

“She is most…remarkable, yes,” Cullen vaguely responded after internally censoring the words stunning, striking, and radiant.

“Although she seems inexplicably taken with a certain cantankerous Templar,” Marian shrugged in an imitation nonchalance as those piercing eyes flayed Cullen for tells. “Forgive me, _former_ Templar.”

“And how did you infer that?” He stoned his face to her probing scrutiny. 

“Our sweet Inquisitor was awfully eager to hear some stories from Kirkwall, chiefly those pertaining to said cantankerous former Templar,” Hawke said, plowing on past Cullen’s frustrated growl. She put her hands up to hinder the boiling spate of annoyance gushing at the back of his throat. “All light-hearted tales, I assure you. Nymeria had quite a giggle at the Blooming Rose one.” 

Blood drained from Cullen’s numb face before blazing back in a flush of enraged embarrassment. Several possible anecdotes floated into recollection, none of them flattering. Maker, how did he refrain from killing this woman over the course of nine years? Unchecked anger vaunted his consternation in taut lines and bulging veins. “Which. Blooming. Rose. Story.”

“So you do fancy her!” Marian’s laughing eyes shimmered comparable to tumbled sapphires. “Varric claimed as much, but you know the dwarf takes liberties. Knight-Captain Tight-Arse has a little crush on his superior. Think of the scandal! Thank the Maker you never entertained an infatuation for Meredith.” Hawke shuddered.

“Hawke.” Cullen’s tone came measured, bridling his surging panic. “Which Blooming Rose story did you tell the Inquisitor?”

She shrugged. “Remember that one time you came trawling for your stray recruits and that woman propositioned you? She thought you were a male whore catering Templar fetishes. After crafting what I’m sure was a promising role-play, she claimed to be an apostate in need of strict punishment. Andraste’s fine arse, the look on your face! And you thought she was serious!” Marian shook with laughter, pounding her mailed fist on his brand new desk as she wheezed. “You hauled her all the way to the Gallows before she realized it wasn’t some elaborate pillow game!” 

Cullen glared, failing to find the humor even after so many years later. 

Hawke tilted her head back in peeved exasperation. The perpetual laugh receded from her eyes without vanishing altogether. “Oh come now, Cullen. Who could blame her for such an assumption? You were a very pretty young man. Imagine how different your life might’ve been if you left the Order for a life of prostitution. If anything, you’d have had a better chance at keeping me out of trouble.” She flashed that salacious smirk and wet her crimson lips. 

Ignoring the jocular flirtation, the blushing Commander stepped closer to his desk. “What else have you told Lady Trevelyan about me, Hawke?” 

“So it’s Lady Trevelyan now?” She grinned like the wolf who swallowed the dormouse before adopting an earnest, if not bored, expression. Marian drew her dagger once more to clean her lacquered nails. “I told her that she could scour every outpost in Thedas and not find a more tireless, qualified—though uptight—person to lead her troops. That after the Circle fell, it was _you_ who pulled Kirkwall up by its bootstraps and reestablished order.”

Cullen narrowed his eyes in question, opening his mouth to speak before Hawke interrupted.

“Yes, yes, Aveline did a lion’s share as well. But she’s…” she paused, her keen eyes purposefully avoiding him now. The dagger whispered back in its leather sheathe. “Never mind that. Plus we both know that little by little she’d usurp the command of this Inquisition right from underneath the Inquisitor.” Hawke leapt to her feet in one sinuous motion and padded quietly towards Cullen, her hips swaying like living sin to frustrate men. It never worked on Cullen. 

“Why are you _here_ , Hawke?” he spoke, his feet planted to the floor boards as she halted in front of him. 

She searched his face and Cullen became instantly conscious of the dark puffiness beneath his eyes, the unshaven scruff, and the sallow complexion crawling over his face. “Are those holes in your roof the reason you’re not sleeping well? You look bloody rung out, Cullen.”

The knight scoffed but he turned from her, staring at the half empty shelf of books which got him through so many sleepless nights. 

“I’ve never slept better in all my life, Hawke,” he lied.

* * *

They tread through the same winter bare forest, only now the wilted fronds seemed to burst with renewed vitality. Despite Nymeria’s rekindled verve, her legs wavered with every step, weaker than they felt right after slaying the dragon. 

The two lovers walked back to camp in a companionable silence peppered with stolen kisses. In the growing chill of dusk, Cullen’s body heat burned through his cambric tunic each time he gathered Nymeria in a swift embrace. Sometimes the kisses came light; a playful fluttering paired with that coy, lopsided smirk. Other times, his lips feasted ravenously on her neck while his hands mapped the contours her body. He tugged Nymeria behind a tangle of a skeletal privet. The knight hastily loosened the top laces of her tunic, baring her aching breasts to his hungry attention and cool air. 

“We’re never going to make it back to camp if you keep this up,” Nymeria spoke breathlessly, her back braced on a robust oak as Cullen sucked her hard nipple in to his mouth. She smelled the lavender and spice of her Orlesian soap mingling with the crisp scent of oncoming night in the forest. They still had a bit of a walk yet, but the smoke of Inquisition cookfires borne in the delicate breeze, dealing a subtle reminder of the obligations awaiting them.

Heedless of their tentative privacy, Cullen gently worried at the hard nub like a man starved, flicking his tongue over the tiny pebbles wreathing it. His heated touch wrought a shiver which had nothing to do with the brisk climate. Patches of gooseflesh erupted all over her body. 

Cullen lifted his sultry gaze and spoke around her nipple. “Perhaps we should never go back?”

The Inquisitor chuckled at that suggestion, her mirth punctuated by a little moan. “Please. As if we’d get very far before Lelianna found us. I’d give it a day before we notice ravens trailing us like feathery shadows.” Her hands carded in his wavy hair and gently pulled him away. “Perhaps I can entice you with a cozy bedroll and a warm tent? Unless you’d rather swive me on the cold ground and walk into camp with dirt stains on our knees?”

The knights’ shoulders slumped with heart heavy sigh. Bestowing a parting kiss on each breast, Cullen lifted her breastband into place and fastened the tunic’s closure. Only when he stood and gathered Nymeria into his arms did she feel his ardent yearning nudging her thigh. 

“Mmmm, I guess I can finally confirm that rumor about Templar stamina,” she said. Her fingers traitorously fondled the front laces of his strained breeches.

“Templar abilities have little to do with it,” he admitted, the corners of his eyes crinkling with affection. A bare hand wrapped around her wrist and pressed her hand to the unruly bulge. Grazing teeth and scratchy stubble rasped the throbbing pulse point in her neck. “I whole heartedly believe that any man treated to our rendezvous in the grotto would earn an unquenchable thirst. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you a mage who bespelled me. Maker, I’ll never have my fill of you. It’s all I can do to keep from putting you on your back with your legs locked around my hips, driving into you as scream so loud the Maker hears you.” 

The heated words scorched their way between her thighs in a knee-weakening frisson. Though Cullen had cleaned her, Nymeria felt the commingled slickness of his seed and her arousal trickling along her tender sex. This man was entirely too eloquent.

"What about everyone else?" She bit her lip. Echoes of the frank discussion from this morning rung anew. "People will talk…if they aren't already."

"Let them.” Cullen squeezed her hand in reassurance. “For years I've dedicated myself wholly to the Order and now the Inquisition. I've donned my blinders and served with only the fruit of calamity for too long, Nymeria. If they are to talk about me, then let it be of this. Let it be of love and not of misfortune.”

"But..." she paused, mitigating the precarious footing of this conversation. "You aren’t upset that you're not the only one who has my heart? Who enjoys my body?"

The lust sputtered out in his eyes, quick as a cold wind smothers fire before it blazes back to life once more. The Commander tilted his head and regarded her with a searching gaze. “Nymeria, when I’m with you, here, in this moment…I’m not sharing you. For all I know, it is only the two of us alone in this wood.” He skimmed his thumb across her cheek, idling over the tiny divot of an old wound notched there. “Maker, you’ve always had a way eclipsing your surroundings so that you burned brightest among them. My lone candle in the night.” 

He kissed her again, not with the devouring demand of carnality, but the slow burn of many dark nights without a person to light his way. Nymeria wanted so desperately to sweep away in the eddy of their incipient passion, but the Inquisitor and Commander could only dodge camp so long without someone searching for them. 

She broke the kiss, touching her forehead to his in a grueling skirmish with her desire. “Camp?”

“Camp.” The knight nipped her neck and placed a distant two paces between them.

The day’s last watery rays of light daubed the trodden ground of the Inquisition encampment. No sooner had the pair stepped within sight of the perimeter guards did a swarm of aides and scouts vie for their much missed attention. Always the glutton for duty, Cullen remained engaged with various tasks long after Nymeria finished her reports and composed correspondence. She’d last seen him leaving the makeshift infirmary after visiting the wounded.

“You go ahead,” the Commander said, reaching out and touching her elbow. “Wait for me in the tent. I’ll bring dinner, if you’d like?”

Nymeria merely nodded, dubious of the limits of their public affections. Flashing a broad smile, the Commander inclined his head and brought his lips a breath’s distance from her ear. “Unless you preferred sustenance of wanton sort?”

Heat pooled across her cheeks and radiated at her core like a burning coal. All it took was one hour and a steamy tryst for the man to reduce her to a bashful young girl. No. She was better than this. Nymeria curled her closed lips into a wolfish grin. “Either you bring my dinner, or I’ll serve supper with your nose buried in my quim, Commander.”

His quick inhalation and tightened jaw affirmed her small victory. Pulling back just enough to observe Cullen’s reaction, she saw the straining twitch in his lips. He wanted to kiss her again, but his wary gaze combed the plethora of spectators and he balked. 

“See you soon, Inquisitor,” he said, a promise as also a threat. Cullen withdrew with reluctant movements, as though any step away from her required great effort.

Puffing a long held breath through pursed lips, the Inquisitor heard the din of the surrounding camp washing back in buzz of fragmented chatter. She looked around. Typically her tent lay at the head of two neat sections, but this terrain staggered the canvas lodgings among the trees in disarray. Embarrassed by having to ask for directions in her own encampment, Nymeria followed the crooked line of cookfires and located her tent at the far end of camp.

The Inquisitor whipped through the tent flap, certain she’d find it empty. Blackwall wouldn’t be there. Despite having spent the last cherished hour with Cullen, she missed her gruff old soldier. She had grown accustomed to finding Blackwall waiting for her, offering her a flagon of ale, a kiss, and some blithe jest. 

Sighing, Nymeria inspected her clean armor. The leather coat looked a tad worse for wear and the metal pauldron was dented, but Andraste preserving it would last her until their return to Skyhold. Blackwall’s armor piled at the foot of her own, shining in the lantern light. Cullen’s heavy plate hung beside her’s on a rudely constructed armor stand. Even his mantle and tabard had been scrubbed clean of blood. The ferocious lion helm gleamed, its high polished luster shimmering across the sculpted surface. Curious, Nymeria picked the ornate helm up and turned it over in her hands. The urge to try the helm on barreled past her respect for propriety and property. 

At that moment, the flap rustled forward, startling Nymeria. Cullen shouldered his way into the tent, carrying two bowls of something steaming and redolent in his hands. His eyebrows raised in silent question as she gingerly grasped his helmet. Shit. She couldn’t have looked more guilty if she tried. But the knight smiled warmly all the same.

“One romp and we’re already sharing armor?” he asked.

“Sorry. I shouldn't have pried,” Nymeria rushed to make amends, about to hang the helm up before he stopped her. 

"No!” he exclaimed before clearing his throat to compose himself. “No. It's fine. Wait, were you actually going to try it on?"

"I'd be lying if I denied wanting to,” she admitted and cursed the slight flush spilling over her cheeks.

He set the bowls down on the correspondence table and stepped in front of her. Gently, he plucked the lion’s head from her lingering grasp and fitted the helm over her head. Beneath the scent of fresh polish and metal, Cullen’s musky sweat wafted within the helmet and licked at her nose. She stared at him through a ferocious ocularium of whetted fangs. Judging by his humored look, she didn’t appear as fierce as Cullen did wearing the beastial helm.

“I look ridiculous, don’t I?” her voice echoed with a hollow tang. 

He lifted the the helm off her face with a chuckle and hung it back upon the stand. “Not really. Now if you had been trying on my cod piece…”

“Shut it,” she swatted him on the shoulder before sniffing the steaming bowls. "What is this? It smells edible. I don’t trust it."

"Dragon stew. Figured we haven't ingested enough of the foul beast’s blood today." He grinned and she knew he teased.

"Already with the bad jokes, huh? Keep going. I’ll requisition you some motley and can take Florianne’s place at Skyhold.” She bit into the mystery soup nonetheless and hummed with satisfaction.

“Same stew from earlier today, just spiced with delicious and entirely too expensive seasonings I bought in Val Royeaux." His eyes darted to the side in hesitation. "Erm, I suppose I should have asked if you wanted it seasoned, shouldn't I? Maker’s breath, I'm already acting presumptuous."

"Cullen, it tastes delicious,” she assured him. “That was very thoughtful of you. Anyone else know about your spice stash? Such luxuries are few on the road."

"Madame de Fer practically blackmails me into sharing with her. The woman has a nose for fine food and the persuasion of an adder.”

Both of them sat on Cullen’s bedroll, eating without another word. Solitude peppered with the sounds of chewing and scraping of spoons on the wooden bowls. It was a precious time of day when no one slid papers into her hands or assailed her with grievances. Just her, a close companion, and the lantern’s lambent hiss. So exquisitely simple, yet she resolved to break their peptic silence.

"How are the troops doing?" Nymeria asked and immediately chastised herself for falling back on talk of duty.

"Still a little shaken from the dragon. But I had Iron Bull open up two hogsheads of spiced wine. Our people earned a few nips to take the edge off,” Cullen said and quaffed from his own tankard.

Nymeria laughed at the decree. "Sounds like we're going to have quite a few hangovers and grumpy soldiers in the morning. Suppose we're fucked if anyone ambushes us in the middle of the night."

"Well, if this is to be our last night on Thedas, than let us live it to the fullest.” Fastening his gaze intensely on hers, Cullen entwined his bare hand and her own and kissed the back of her palm.

She’d caught those eyes so many times before, and each instance Cullen’s were first to flick away, downcast to a missive or observing the clash of training swords. Now they remained stalwartly fixed upon her. When the Commander was angry, those eyes flashed like discs of burnished copper, honed reflective edges which razed people to shreds. But as Cullen stared at her now, copper melted into amber, of some amorphous element which had once flowed hot before hardening. Something tacky which could swallow her whole and capture her there forever. The amber gaze resonated now, conveying all those lurid thoughts and late nights spent alone in bed save for a burning candle or the wind howling through the gaps in his ceiling. 

And now those drowning eyes pulled her in, much like the quickmire had done. And there was no one who could rescue her from that rapacious stare which dragged her under and into a fog of primitive hunger. 

"Should we...what would you like me..." Cullen choked on his uncertainty. He was thinking about it too much. 

"Cullen," she cut him off with a coy smile. "Just do what you've dreamed about doing to me."

He released a long breath, his muscular chest decompressing as the stress eased from where he harbored it. He smirked. "No one would see us for days if I did that, Inquisitor.”

Setting aside her empty bowl and half-drunk tankard, Nymeria toyed with a wispy hank of his wheat-hued hair. "Then perhaps my tactical advisor can afford to be a tad more decisive.”

"Well, as your tactical advisor, allow me eliminate the most common variable of offense," he remarked and began unfastening the closures of her tunic. “You rarely wore a stitch of clothing in my fantasies."

"Not a single stitch?” Her voice hitched in feigned outrage. "No gritty fantasies of taking me while we’re dressed in armor, all tired yet enamored from battle?”

Cullen raised an eyebrow at her awfully specific suggestion. "Usually something diaphanous. A scanty, tailored garment leaving just enough to my woefully deprived imagination." He peeled back the tunic, allowing cool air to whisper over her stomach and shoulders. "So you've had fantasies about taking me while we’re dressed in armor?"

She pinched her bottom lip between her teeth, grounding her to the sensations of this intimate moment. "Mmmmm, and if you had trouble envisioning my body, how difficult do you think you made it for me beneath all that armor?”

He hummed in satisfaction and kissed her throat, his hands exploring the naked warmth of her flank. 

Nymeria pushed on, voice faltering as he nipped her pulse point and nuzzled behind her ear. "I never saw you out of plate until that night in your tent. I was starting to think you were soldered into that cuirass. Maker, I couldn't take my eyes off you." 

"I noticed," he chuckled. Adroit fingers worked at her breastband. The smolder of his voice spilled down her chest and pooled in her belly like good whiskey. Hoarse yet pleasant, with a lingering aftertaste and heat. 

The band crumpled over her lap, freeing her breast to hang into their natural, unfettered shape. Cullen disposed of garment with a careless toss. Like a thirsty man leaning over a fresh spring, the knight slanted his mouth upon hers. Insistent lips burned against the seam of her mouth, the tongue sliding over it until she opened for him. Below Orlesian spices and wine, the faintest taste of citrus and sandalwood crept into her blood and intoxicated with each passing moment their mouths clashed against one another. 

His sweet kisses grew rougher, surrendering to the voracious beast which swam in those amber eyes. The stiff whiskers of his stubble abraded her chin and lips, chaffing and swelling the sensitive flesh. Hands which had formerly been hesitant now ventured upwards from the contours of her waist, forging a path to cup her breasts in firm handfuls, molding his fingers around the pliant flesh. Playful thumbs brushed circles around stiff peaks, evoking a ragged moan deep in her throat to muffle in his mouth like a prayer. 

"Maker's breath, you're better than anything I've ever envisioned,” he said, obviously awed by her responsiveness. 

"Did I have on my trousers in these visions?" she teased, slipping her fingers from his hair with the intent to unlace her breeches.

"Now that you mention it..." Cullen growled, twisted the waistband in his fists and shucked her out, small clothes and all. The Commander tossed aside her erstwhile clothing. Now she laid supine, naked on his bedroll with only the heat of his body scorching upon her like a small sun. The bloody man still had all his clothes on. Andraste's tits, she falls for this every time. 

The knight stared down at her in halting reverence. Broad shoulders rose and fell to the cadence of his deep breaths. He worshipped her with a mere look, kneeling between her vulnerable, splayed thighs in a trance. As soon as Cullen tore his attention off of her silken flesh, he set about shedding his own clothing. The crimson tunic rustled over his wide shoulders with a frenzied yank. Toned abs slid like smooth river stones beneath an expanse of alabaster skin. He was leaner than she expected, but no less powerful or impressive. Eager hands moved to shove his breeches down his hips before Nymeria intervened.

"Let me," she urged with her hands clasped on his wrist. "I like unwrapping my gifts."

Nymeria doubted the man would argue. Especially as she sat there naked, legs spread and breasts heaved as she stared up at him. She could probably ask the Commander to rebuild the Temple of Sacred Ashes brick by brick and he 'd do so without complaint.

Cullen dropped his hands to rest at his waist, mesmerized as Nymeria leisurely pushed his breeches down. His firm, heavy cock sprung from its confinement and the Inquisitor’s stomach fluttered at the obscenely beautiful movement. Heady male musk pervaded the air. Fully succumbing to her lustful whims, Nymeria stroked the velvety shaft which tinged a darker tan than the rest his body. Coarse grunts of encouragement rumbled in Cullen’s throat as she stroked the hot, heavy prick, sliding the length in a loose grip of adroit fingers. Each downstroke exposed more of the ruddy cockhead and weeping slit.

And Nymeria immediately wanted it in her mouth. There was no tease. She lost any and all ability to tease with a single look at him. She bent to the task. No glancing bites on his thighs or stomach. Just her tongue flicking up a bead of bitter salty precum from the slit. 

He shuddered with a groan. "Maker, Nymeria. How did I ever deprive myself of your affection?”

Salt and leather dandled over Nymeria’s tongue as she took half of his shaft past her lips. His enticing musk flooded and buzzed in her veins. The man was so potently masculine it made her lightheaded. Steadily, she positioned herself on hands and knees, reveling as he throbbed in her mouth. Another inflamed groan wrenched from his lips as she drew him deeper.

But before she could fully sate either of them, Cullen delicately pulled her off his prick and peered down, those deep set eyes half-lidded with lust. His calloused thumb smeared a dribble of spit across her bottom lip. “That feels fantastic, sweetling. But I want to savor how another part of your body wraps around me."

Cullen guided her to lay down on her stomach of all positions. Apprehension flickered across Nymeria’s face at the somewhat impersonal pose. Though she enjoyed the feral carnality of _a tergo_ , she’d prefer to look in his eyes the first few times they coupled.

“Forgive me, I mean, yes of course,” he amended with a sheepish mien, contradicting prior smugness. “I’d want you like this as well, but I intend to do a little exploring. Scouting if you will."

"Scouting for what, may I ask?" She framed her neck and studied him over her shoulder. 

"Little places which incite loud noises, mostly," he nipped the backs of her calves. "Whimpers are appreciated as well. You mewled so lovely the other night and now I want to be the one who wrings those sounds from you."

“But— Ah!” she jumped as he nipped the ticklish spot on her knee. “But we ought to be quiet, for now at least.”

That prospect inspired another complacent chuckle. The half-smirk of his lips skimmed her lower thighs. “Then by all means, be as quiet as a chantry owl, sweetling. But I’ll not hold back on the account of prying ears.”

These intimate explorations lacked the frenetic urgency which possessed him in the grotto. Cullen made a pilgrimage of bites and stubbled scrapes up the backs of her shapely legs, lingering only when lips met the crease between her bottom and thigh. “Appears I've come to the mountains on my journey."

"Mountains?!” she hissed out, attempting to twist and face him. 

"Hillocks if it suits you then. The mountains are on the front, capped with flushing peaks,” he spoke audaciously against her rear before pinching a portion of her cushy hindflesh in his teeth. She'd have bantered back if Cullen eased his touches long enough to muster some coherency. An expedition of lips and teeth traversed every inch of her derrière in his ambitious curiosity to know her. Know _all_ of her evidently. Nymeria bit back a rather scandalized exclamation when his thumbs spread her cheeks.

"Cullen..." she started before teeth nipped sharper on one partially splayed hillock. Despite her alarm, he continued to hold her ruthlessly exposed.

"It's a rather detailed expedition." She heard his smirking. “You’ve accused me of being painfully meticulous in the past, haven’t you, Inquisitor?”

His lips resumed their tour northward. Nymeria’s world reduced to the dragging flutters of caresses up her back and his dipping tongue in the valley of her spine. He remained true to his intention of exploring the topography of her body, only pausing to attend to spots that evoked a whimper or giggle. Maker, the man drove her mad in his perusal. Mad to the point that when his stiff member nudged the side of her arse, she was a few breaths short of demanding he take her. To lift herself up on her knees and rut like a wild animal with her cheek buried into his pillow. Instead, Cullen swept her hair off her nape and sucked along her sensitive throat until she trembled beneath him.

“Roll over,” he bade hoarsely in her ear. The command came soft but irrefutable. 

She nearly sobbed with joy when he aligned his hips with her slick, needing apex. The fever hot length of him glided along the sodden cleft, coating itself in a liberal offering of her juices. But the frustrating knight made no move to breach her, only paying homage to her throat and lips. Tender breast left to the mercy of his hands as he kneaded them. Every ministration employed to stoke her yet hold her from flaring over.

He stared down at her, not with the savage, lupine eyes of a beast assailed by lust, but the composed, canny stare of a man who savored the hunt better than the capture. The look bore a similar heat to the ones he swept over her from across a chess board. To understand her, to unwrap her, to submerge himself beyond her body and figure out what made her tick. It was terribly intimate and absolutely arousing at once. 

“Cullen…please,” she whimpered the second he rolled off and on his side. Her hips canted at the loss of his body upon hers, writhing in unfulfilled desperation. “Please, please fuck me. I need you inside me. I’m burning for you.”

“When I haven’t finished exploring you yet?” he said, his fingers rolling her nipple, wracking a strong wave of want to course through her body. Those same fingers roamed over her stomach until they lazed into the lower nest of her curls. She knew by the heady scent of her feminine musk that the curls were drenched for him. "And here at last I've stumbled across the hidden vale."

She strangled a shattered keen as his fingertip glanced the outer pleats of her sex. The man tore her apart at the seams by yanking a one stitch at a time in teasing agony. A single swipe of his thumb wrenched her pitiful—and embarrassingly loud—sob. 

"Why what ever is the matter, Inquisitor?" Cullen said low in her ear. “According to you, rogues are masters at keeping quiet.”

He slid a finger inside her to the first knuckle and Nymeria bore down to meet his palm. It wasn’t enough. She needed more of him. All of him.

“Andraste’s flaming arse, Cullen,” she sniped and he nipped her ear in reprisal.

“Hush, sweetling,” he said the moment he pulled away, sounding awfully succulent. “So, you know that I've touched myself whilst thinking about you, but what about my Inquisitor? Ever played with yourself to naughty thoughts pertaining to the Commander of your forces?" 

“Yes," she admitted, sucking in a breath as another finger slipped inside her. 

"How did you do it?"

"With my fingers. Like this.” She laid her hand atop his, drawing his digits out to rest upon her swollen, neglected bud. Nymeria shamelessly manipulated his hand to her liking, moving his calloused fingers in a abbreviated strokes atop her clit.

"What were you thinking about when you touched yourself?" His voice sizzled, the steel core of it melting beneath the heat his own arousal. 

Nymeria struggled to remember her own name let alone coherently depict her unchaste fantasies. “I-In Haven, I always fantasized about sneaking into your quarters in the dead of night. Finding you sleeping naked beneath your sheets.”

“And?” The once steady breath of his came ragged.

“Slipping beneath those sheets and waking you up with a naughty surprise. Feeling your cock grow heavy and warm in mouth. Raking my fingers over magnificent thighs I knew awaited beneath those leather breeches. Tasting your seed as it flooded over my tongue and down my throat, settling into a warm pool in my belly,” she said, distantly pleased at the tremor that pulsed through his hand. It had been a small crack in that disciplined facade, but it was a start.

“Maker’s breath, Nymeria,” he groaned and nuzzled her temple. 

She needed to keep pushing, to keep buffeting his staunchly reined control with her vivid words. "And, in Skyhold, I imagined you catching me touching myself there in my bed. You don't say a word, just strip off your armor and take me.” She drew her face away to turn her head, gauging his reaction. “Sometime you left the armor on and just bent me over the bed, swiving me with your trousers at your knees because you wanted me so fiercely, so fucking much that you couldn’t be bothered to waste time undressing.” 

She removed her hand from his, permitting him to dictate his ministrations. His calloused fingers moved with a swordsman's proficiency over the sensitive bulb, slow and exact, committing the pattern to muscle memory. 

"Take you? Just like that?" Cullen made a throaty noise between a groan and whisper. "Is that what you expected of me, Inquisitor?" 

With a growling rumble, Cullen pulled his hand away and sucked the nectar from his fingers. His voracious gaze consumed the sight of her, sweeping over the glistening nether curls, the arched stomach, her full breasts and lingered on her florid cheeks and glassy eyes. Galvanized by his touch, Nymeria shivered as his slick fingers traced a line from sternum to navel. 

"Maker, how is it I feel more powerful having you naked beneath me than standing before the mightiest army in Thedas?" he asked in lustful wonder. 

"Probably the same way I feel having the Commander of the mightiest army in Thedas laying next to me with his hot, ironclad cock nudging my hip." Her naughty grin wavered. “Although I’d certainly like it better inside me.”

Those words and the overwrought culmination of his diligent seduction broke upon him. The Commander lunged between her legs, pausing only to coat his blunt cockhead with her juices before thrusting inside in one swift, immolating move. The downward force of the maneuver drove the breath from both their lungs. 

Growling, he pushed her knees back so far they touched her shoulders, effectively tilting her pelvis off his bedroll. “Like this? Is this what you want?”

Her hands clapped over her lips to stifle the choir of moans surging from her chest. Cullen yanked the hands away, crushing his mouth to hers and swallowing her rapturous cries. Kiss swollen lips and scraping teeth thrust her into a torrent of sensation. Tumbling further from any semblance of civility, Nymeria gouged her short nails in the dense cords of muscle bulging alongside his neck. Such savagery only hastened the knight’s relentless pounding.

With each plundering thrust, Nymeria writhed at the exquisite fullness and the way her body coiled in on itself. Succinct words drowned in the deafening thunder of her heartbeat. Whatever vernacular she formed escaped in a knot of whimpers and curses. Pleased with her splintered response, the knight mercilessly drove into her, his hips exacting a toll of wet smacks against her splayed thighs. Nectar spilled with every plunge, dribbling into the cleft of her arse and down the small of her back. She shuddered, relishing the obscene thrill as his heavy bollocks slapped her puckered entrance. Blunt fingers bit into her calves and her stomach muscles burned from the folded position, adding a tincture of pain to the pleasure of their joining. But before she settled into the punishing rhythm, the quickened pace tapered off to an unbidden halt.

“Look at me, Nymeria,” he demanded, his hips stilling.

She hadn’t realized her eyes were clenched shut until the order sounded. 

Nymeria cracked opened her eyes, drinking in the pale hue of his skin limned golden in the lantern light. The tent roof pitched into a halo of darkness past Cullen’s head, making it seem as though nothing else existed beyond his embrace. His scarred upper lip thinned back in a taut snarl of euphoria. Glowing embers flecked his amber eyes. That wavy tousle of spun gold stuck up where her fingers had pulled them. Utter reverence braided with primal carnality, but both emotions faltered beneath the strain of his own imminent release. His brow trembled as he grappled himself from peaking, steeling every nerve in his body to last longer. 

“Cullen,” she whispered and ran her fingers through his hair. “Spill inside me. Please. Don’t hold back. I want to feel you flooding my womb.”

With those lurid words, the reins of control slipped from his grasp. The knight buried his face in the crook of her shoulder, managing a few more staggered bucks of his arse before he swore an oath and spent inside the solace of her body. Limp from release, he let go of her straining thighs and collapsed flush atop her, hiding his face in her neck.

“Sorry,” he apologized, his hot breath fanning over her chest. The word came barely audible but weighted with a lifetime’s worth of shame. 

Assailed by the post-coital weariness and some perceived unease, Cullen’s cock flagged fast inside her. Even the few kisses she fluttered on his cheek failed tempt him from hiding. Nymeria ignored the urge to tug him up by his pretty golden hair. Blackwall required such high handedness, but Cullen was a different beast than Blackwall. No. This matter required the delicacy of a woman’s persuasion than a stronger arm. 

She twined a finger through his hair in an absent gesture. “Sorry? Why whatever about, dearheart?”

Cullen rubbed his face over her sweaty skin as though newly awoken, his scruff a gentle abrasion on her shoulder. “You didn’t…” he sighed, those burly shoulders deflating in surrender to her tender prodding. Stubborn male pride abated and he slowly lifted his head to meet her curious gaze. “You didn’t have your end this time. Like before in the grotto.”

“Doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it,” she smiled tenderly, her muscles clenching his spent prick to endorse her claim. “And what you said before we swived…those questions you asked…” A fresh heat poured over her cheeks and suffused all the way down to her nipples.

The knight’s chuckling groan quaked in his chest as he slid from her arms and the snug embrace of her body. Seed trickled from her petals and onto his bedroll. The absence of his heat made her want to clutch him back upon her to dispel the chill. Cullen reclined on his side. His featherlight touch, so drastically different than the crushing press of his body, played along the inside of her thighs. 

“I guess it’s only fair if confide a few fantasies of mine,” he offered. “After all, I’ve made your wine spill over my tongue and drip down my prick, but never on my fingers.”

Whining affirmation stuck on her tongue as his fingers resumed their earlier ministrations. Seed and nectar swirled around her swollen bud and plump lips. “Yes,” she breathed and undulated her hips to meet his seeking fingers.

“Well then,” the smirk edged back in his husky voice. It thrummed through her ear and rode into her clit. “Most times, I’m sitting at my desk, poring over a tedium of missives, but often my thoughts wander to you. You’ve given your Commander many a stubborn cockstand, Inquisitor…”

 

****

Plain lye soap best cut the smoky, metallic scent of dragon's blood. The fetid residue soaked through his undershirt, leaving a sticky mess of matted chest hair. Blackwall steeped in the heated pool until he pruned, languishing in the steam caressing his cheeks and the aches melting from his muscles. Maker, if he had been with Nym, he'd never have left this place. The exhausted warrior slid further into the waiting warmth of the shallow depths, sighing and strangely content for a someone who sent another man to his lover's bed.

Two distinct sets of boot prints entered and left the cavern. Oddly, Blackwall felt a sense of relief rather than gnawing jealousy. So Cullen hadn't turned tail and Nym wasn't alone? Good. She had spent so much time alone in the beginning that he'd worried for her. Surrounded by strangers in a strange place where most people seek out favors over friendship. He knew well the abyssal depths of loneliness, a solitary wandering his cursed ambition wrought, and he knew Nym deserved the comfort of companionship in this harrowing situation that ill luck thrust upon her. If he could spare her even just one night of loneliness, than he was happy to do so, regardless of the means.

Blackwall shrugged on a clean outfit of a plain grey tunic and laced breeches. His boots could use a thorough scouring, but that awaited at this marches end. Night cooled the water trickling off the ends of his hair, running fingers of ice down his back and neck. Though he favored the salty chill of the coast, the forest's solitude had always been a favorite sanctuary. He'd taken easily to his hermitage after Warden Blackwall, donning his isolation like armor. 

A hunter's moon slipped through the bare branches overhead, lighting the way just enough without warranting a torch. If anything, he could follow the whispers of jollity rolling through the trees and the smells of the encampment fires. The susurrus rose to wrap the warmth around him in a clamor of penny whistles and drums and off-key singing. Judging by the slanted listing of some of the knights, libations were being distributed in celebration. 

One female knight marveled a dragons talon being passed around. Many of the knights had participated in the chopping up the beast, if not for the novelty than to claim a souvenir. Blackwall and Cassandra performed the dirtiest job. Together they dissected the dragon’s belly, ever cautious to avoid puncturing the bowels lest they end up spilling dragon shit all over themselves and the roadway. Other knights merely hacked at the beast’s claws or yanked out a tooth. Blackwall would’ve encouraged a modicum of respect had the beast not nearly killed his paramour and made a cock up of their already taxed journey back to Skyhold. Bloody beast of inconvenience. 

Warm, spiced wine poured over his tongue in a well-deserved spate. He exchanged only a few congratulations and platitudes with various troops on his walk towards the tent. Blackwall knew better than to try the flap. If they were smart, which he hoped they were, the couple ensured their privacy with tied tent flaps. Instead he sought solitude of the campfire and his own thoughts this evening. Clamoring instruments and off-key singing buzzed at his peripheral awareness, but errant groans and oaths wafted through the tent like a clarion in the night. 

The lover’s song was long in the chorus of other’s carousal. Most soldiers huddled around various patches of revelry at the other end of camp. After a time, the only person who dared approach was Cullen’s aide, Ser Briggs. With a look of perpetual fret clouding his sunburnt brow, the young man lumbered up with indecisive strides.

"The Inquisitor and Commander are indisposed at the moment," Blackwall informed the lad without prompt.

Nervous eyes flitted between Blackwall and over his head at the staked tent. “A situation has arisen which may require the Commander’s mediation.”

“And he is currently indisposed,” the warrior, a former captain in the Orlesian military, reiterated with tempered steel in his voice. “Out with it. What is this matter you speak of?”

"Erm, a few of the recruits have engaged the Qunari in a drinking competition,” he spoke, eyes locked on Blackwall’s boots instead of his face.

Blackwall scoffed. “Little spiced wine'll leave 'em with a sour head and stomach. No need for the Commander to play nanny mabari.”

"But it's not wine they are drinking! It is some foul libation from the Qunari's own wine skin. Smells like you could strip enamel with it." The lad seemed genuinely concerned. 

Training the humor from his face, Blackwall advised, “Think of it as cultural submergence." _Poor bastards._ Bull had him take a nip of the foul Qunari drink after every dragon kill, and each time the liquor knocked Blackwall on his arse and into next week. Some Templars were about to meet the limits of their legendary endurance tonight.

"But, serrah Blackwall—“

A tinkling feminine giggle trickled over the ambient music and into the calm night. Cullen’s throaty chuckle and some mercifully indecipherable words chased the Inquisitor’s mirth.

"Erm, just what are the Inquisitor and Commander Cullen engaged in at the moment?" Ser Briggs asked, his sloe eyes fastened on the tent.

"Something that the Commander would be rather cross about being interrupted," Blackwall said through his teeth. "Now, be a good lad, have a cup of wine and settle down for the night. Or perhaps you ought you take this down the chain of command? Shall I fetch Seeker Cassandra over some drunk knights whom the Chantry deemed capable enough to wield a sword but not a flagon?"

The young man shook his head excitedly. "No, serrah! Sorry, serrah!”

Briggs trudged off in flustered huff. Before Blackwall resumed his seat before the fire, a movement in the woods drew his keen gaze. The movement lingered far behind the tent but close enough to perhaps catch snippets of conversation within. As Blackwall’s eyes adjusted to the darkness beyond, he discerned the motion to be that of a dark cloak rustled in the breeze. However bilious the cloak hung, he identified the lithe figure enshrouded beneath. 

“Maker’s balls. It never ends,” he muttered to himself, stalking over the bare ground to flank the figure.

"The wine's that way," Blackwall grunted with a swing of his head. Yet the elf archer remained unflinching. 

"And your lady is in there with _him_.” Sera said, the disdain lathered thick.

"And you think I'd be standing here if I didn't know that already?" Blackwall crossed his arms over his barrel chest, stepping directly into her line of sight.

"So it is true, innit? What those gossiping gits ‘ave be plodding on about,” she exclaimed in a hissing whisper. "You lettin Cully Wully take a crack at 'er?"

Blackwall sniffed indignantly. "I'm not letting anyone _take a crack at her._ Nym's a grown woman and she may choose whomever she wants to share her bedroll. Such is the nature of our relationship." _Since this morning anyway_ he added internally for his own benefit.

Sera cocked her head, those mercurial elf eyes taking stock of his flaws like sifting a deck of cards. "You're doin' this cos you think you're not good enough for her, yeah ?" she shifted from one deft foot to another. "You still think that what you did fucked your chances with her?”

Blackwall didn't dignify her question with anymore of a response than rubbing his nose and sticking his thumbs in his belt.

"Whatever. Not like Cully’s any better than you. All the shite I hear about him killing mages and demanding entire towers of people put to the sword. Bloody jackboot." She scrunched her nose in disgust.

"You do remember I was a bloody jackboot once upon a time." Blackwall raised one of his thick eyebrows. "My armor just wasn't as holy and my intentions were smeared in shit."

"Right, but he's nothin like you and me, yeah?" She sneered. "With his perfect childhood in a perfect little village with a perfect family. Blah!" Sera stuck her finger in her mouth a gagged. "We did what we did to survive. Not cos one day we was bored in our perfect lives and went 'Andraste's furry knickers! Think I’ll become a knight so I can wear a shiny suit and act like a bully boy. Ho! Ho! Good bit of sport that is!’” She balled her fists on her hips, squared her shoulders and started marching in place.

"Sera," Blackwall dropped his tone into utter seriousness. “Leave it. There’s more to the man, and you know that. No one’s dallying behind my back. So don’t fret your fuzzy head over other people’s bedsport.”

"I mean, don't know how you did it. Nailin’ her in the first place. Thought she were one of those noble slags who get their knickers soggy fucking gutter sods. But it's more than that between you two, yeah? She loves you. Mean, she'd have to love you to tarry round with that mardy beard. Not to mention the smell,” Sera said as an unintentional insult.

Blackwall closed his eyes and let the inadvertent slight go. "Sera, just let it be for now, alright? We're still testing the waters of this...arrangement. So just give them their privacy. Please, for me?"

The elf narrowed her eyes at him before glancing back at the tent. "You sure he even knows where to put it? Or are you going to go in there and lend a hand?” She flashed a mischievous smile and wiggled her brows. “That’s some Randy Dowager piss, innit?”

"Goodnight, Sera," Blackwall guided her away from the tent by the shoulders.

* * *

Blackwall ventured to the crossroads inn alone. Sheets of rain pelted the tight knit of his woolen blue cloak. In truth, he was grateful for the inclement weather as it deterred any curious companions from joining his furlough. Even Sera took one peek out the window and told him to him to _shove off with that rubbish_. Nym insisted on drinking at a posher tavern in town, claiming she’d had less chance of stabbing some foolish tatterdemalion for groping the Herald of Andraste’s holy arse. But the rainstorm also exhumed the Grey Warden’s habitual feeling of paranoia with finer establishments. No sooner would he walk in with the Inquisitor’s retinue then the myriad questions begin to fly from nosy patrons. _Where were you stationed? What landed you with the Wardens? Warden-Constable Blackwall? You know, I might have heard of you! You served at such and such place and did some gallant shite._ Maker, why couldn’t he have assumed the identity of an unremarkable Grey Warden?

So he embarked on his lonesome to drink among swineherds, whores, whoresons, rievers, and probably an apostate or two. These had been his people for years. The bereft wayfarers of the civilized world wandering from one drink to the next. Try as he might to plant himself among the elite of the Inquisition, these were his roots woven beneath manure-laden soil.

The Drunken Hermit was like any other tavern he’d ever set foot in. Besides a certain local charm pertaining only to the Amarathine, it offered the same shrill laughter, the same vulgar jokes, the same terrible bards, the same grainy ale, and raffish characters that only a crossroads inn could boast and storytellers could never do justice. 

Trampled rushes scattered beneath his muddy boots. The room smelled of roast duck, sweet tobac, and the commingled scents of various unwashed races. Blackwall shouldered his way through the crowd, mindful to keep his sword hilt hidden in the folds of his cloak. Not that he believed himself the only one armed, but because enchanted swords attracted an unwanted curiosity and scoundrels wishing to prove their derring-do.

“Thom?” a raspy voice spoke at his side and flooded ice water through his veins.

Despite the tankard of ale being placed in front of him, Blackwall was no longer thirsty. If not now a little sick. He cringed at the name which had once been his own. Try as he’d like to inter Thom Rainier, the grave of his past life proved shallow at the worst times. 

“Thom? Thom Rainier?” the Marcher voice slurred a tad more insistently this time.

Shit. Maybe if he just ignored the soused bastard, he’d figure himself mistaken and leave him be. It was best to leave a mystery, or at worse, an alias. He couldn't have the names Blackwall and Thom Rainier being spoken in the same circles, regardless of how low on the rungs the speakers dangled off.

“Thom,” a hand laid on his shoulder and Blackwall’s breath caught in his chest. “Thom, it’s Destrian Bolbec. From Markham.”

“Serrah, you must be mistaken,” Blackwall asserted, cursing himself for dropping his soaked cowl inside the tavern room. _Bollocks, man. Will you never learn that it only take one person, one blighter to recognize you and your fraud unravels in your fingers?_ “I know not whom you speak of, serrah.”

The man laughed, wavering where he stood. He must have been so deep in his cups that he was lapping up dregs. But beneath the sunburnt wrinkles and blackened gums missing most of their teeth, he recognized the face of Destrian Bolbec, a butcher’s son who lived on the same Markham street at Thom had. 

“Pshaw! Enough with that, ya whoreson! You think I wouldn’t recognize you with that dead bit of bear hide dangling from your cheeks!” he roared in laughter and clapped Blackwall on the shoulder. 

A fragment of a memory twined amid the tavern’s clangor. Dimly, Blackwall recalled the hound's keening whine as the ligature choked its mangey throat. Even when young Thom had closed his eyes, he still saw the mutt’s own obsidian irises rolling in the round whites of his skull. Thom was haunted by how those whites steadily tinged the a gruesome red of broken blood vessels. All while Destrian Bolbec and his band of hooligans brayed like smacked asses.

And it was all Thom’s fault.

_”Stop! Leave him alone! I'll tell my da!” young Thom had plead feebly._

_Destrian, a lad with about five years and fifty pounds on young Thom, twisted the lad’s collar in his bloody hands. "If you tell anyone about this, we'll do you the same way." Those thick fingers tightened on Thom’s scrawny neck, a dark promise before shoving him away._

The clamor of the tavern room surged around him, dragging the Warden from one of the most terrifying memories of his youth. Blackwall's fingers twitched, eager to latch on the Destrian’s squat neck and squeeze until the irises rolled up in the reddening whites. 

A shadow of recollection must have shrouded Blackwall's face because Destrian looked around in wariness. 

"As it happens, I do remember you, Bolbec," he turned from the bar, his voice low and eerily level. "You have any of the other lads with you?"

Bolbec mistook Blackwall's question for nostalgia, for that gaping grin unfurled on his boorish face once more. "Nay! We're about the only blighters who crawled from Markham and are still round to tell the tale. Been traveling’ round for these past twenty years after I gave up reiving. Now I do honest work. Got my wain of salt pork for the taverns and jugs of horse piss for the tanner's. But we used to get into some trouble, us lads, eh?" He smirked wider and Blackwall fought the urge to splinter what few teeth remained in the man’s head. "What have you got your finger's in these days, Thom?”

While he lacked the prowess to pull up a cowl, at least he kept the cloak cinched around his chest, concealing his Grey Warden armor. "Same auld shit as when I left Markham with Gedric’s lot. Nothing as grand as pork and piss, I'm afraid."

Bolbec guffawed, quaffing from his flagon and wiping the dribble with his tattered sleeve.

_“Bring us the dog, Thom!” Destrian had said. “You have a way with the mutts. They’re fond of you. We just want to play with ‘im and give ‘im some scraps from my father's bone heap. Nice juicy marrow for the pup!”_

Unaware of his own actions, Blackwall’s fingers locked on the back of Bolbec's skull, careening the man's face towards the scuffed bar top. Wet sounds of crunching nose cartilage knocked the tavern's clamor to an abrupt halt. Blackwall brought the man’s head back up, finding sick satisfaction in the gruesome sight but unable to stow his hungry rage. Gouts of blood streamed from flared nostrils, spreading in a great, crimson splotch over Bolbec’s dingy tunic.

"That was for the fucking dog, you fucking bastard!” Blackwall’s fingers snagged in the other man's roughspun and towed Bolbec’s ruined nose within an inch of his own. 

"Kill'em!" A voice screeched from the rogue’s gallery, or was that Blackwall's own blood fervor screaming that? He wanted to end Bolbec more than anyone in his entire life. Those canine whines intermingled with the screams of children, claws scrabbling for purchase woven with the chopping of a carriage door. Blackwall's shoulders trembled beneath the weight of his own selfishness. His own cowardice and foolish ambition to belong with the boys levied a graven toll. But would ending Bolbec's sniveling existence grant catharsis or salvation? 

He should kill him. He's killed other men who identified him over the years. A few blackguards who'll not go missed, or so he always told himself as he washed the blood from his hands or crouched over the bodies.

"I can only hope that you feel the same fear when you die," Blackwall rasped out between clenched teeth. "But I'll not do it. I'll not stoop to your filthy wallows."

With that remark, Blackwall shoved the man back, sending him crashing onto the stale rushes of the tavern with a pathetic, blood-choked whine. The Warden fished through his coin purse and slammed a few coppers down for his untouched drink and the bloody mess he made. All eyes locked upon him. Faces bore hues of unease or drooling bloodlust from the more raffish patrons. One piss-luck encounter and he submerged himself back into the world of sellswords and tarnished honor. Who was he kidding? He could live among highborn, court a highborn lass, but he'd never fit among them. Perhaps Ser Blackwall belonged in the Inquisition, but not Thom Rainier of Markham.

Blackwall tugged his cowl over his head and stalked back out beneath the cold, battering rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next set flashbacks are probably going to rip out Cullen and Blackwall's hearts. Hahahaha they're tragic, soul-rending and mostly written. I'm sorry, my sons. But there's still smutty times with Nymeria, so that's good, I guess.


End file.
